The smallest things can sometimes be overlooked! Our meeting at SanDisk this morning saw the introduction of the new SanDisk Extreme Pro SATA 3 SSD, an SSD chalk full of upgrades from the last generation and, like many we are seeing at Computex, with that enterprise flavor and consumer value.
The Extreme Pro touts performance of 550MB/s read and 520MB/s write speeds with availability up to the 1TB capacity. MSRP is very competitive at $189 (240GB), $369 (480GB) and $599 (960GB) and, something we will definitely see are even lower prices as so many manufacturers are now introducing 1TB SSDs just under that $600 price point. Something that NO OTHER manufacturers are providing, however, is a ten year warranty with their SSDs. This is the one and only if you are looking for a great warranty in your SSD purchase.
In fact, this little bit of information was completely void of any marketing acknowledgement yet, in our opinion, should be the highlight of this introduction. A 10 year warranty on any SSD is something to rave about. Add to that the fact that SanDisk has fine tuned the performance of this SSD with nCache to the extent that it definitely attracts those enthusiasts and media professionals that need top performance which remains consistent over steady and long term use.
The thing we can say for sure with SanDisk is that with them, SSDs can be a box of chocolates.
Another consistent attraction at the SanDisk Booth again this year is a SSD replacement competition for those who like to swap!
If I may offer a closing thought, SanDisk was the first consumer/client release ever reviewed way back in 2007 and we were the first to get that report out. For some time after, they seemed to fade into the woodwork until only a few years back their reappearance was seen in a SATA 2 release as we moved to SATA 3. From that point forward, SanDisk has been a monster in the SSD arena, not only with great acquisitions such as SMART, but also in their marketing philosophy. They aren’t afraid to step outside the box and this is definitely seen with the new Extreme Pro, a SSD that has enthusiast/enterprise features, yet the price of a value driven SSD and with a 10 year warranty!?!?!? Kudos to SanDisk and their marketing team for just setting the bar on SSD warranties and pricing that much lower!