You might remember Corsair's P256 SSD from our brief look back in April, but the 256GB drive has now been made official and has reached retail priced at around £550.
Wallet-wary readers will note that that's over £2 per gigabyte, and it makes a 2TB traditional hard disk feel like a bargain at £240.
Then again, this is a no-moving-parts solid state drive, and it arrives with Corsair's two year limited warranty and the promise of being "designed using cutting-edge technology to deliver the highest performance and compatibility."
As stated in our prior report, Corsair's P256 uses Samsung MLC flash memory and a Samsung Controller that's coupled with a 128MB cache and Native Command Queueing (NCQ) support. According to Corsair, that's a combination that'll deliver "blistering, stutter-free performance" and sequential read and write speeds of 220MB/s and 200MB/s, respectively.
Commenting on the launch, John Beekley, VP of Applications Engineering at Corsair, said:
The Corsair Storage Solutions P256 delivers the best computing experience of any single storage drive available today. Using the P256 results in immediate and dramatic improvements in system startup and shutdown, game level loading, application startup, and many other everyday tasks. Additionally, the P256 is more durable and reliable than hard disk drives, and has been shown in the Corsair Labs to provide up to 25% longer battery life in portable computers.
So just how good is it, and is it worth the £550 asking price? Stay tuned as we'll be bringing you the official verdict in a HEXUS.net review later this week.
Official press release: Corsair® Announces New 256GB High-Performance Solid-State Drive
