Play3r Awards 2014! – The Best Products of 2014

[section_title title=Storage]Storage

Awarded By – Gavin

Design – Samsung 850 EVO 250GB

When it comes to design, I go based purely on aesthetic and any performance increase due to new technology; in an SSDs case, the former is probably more important but with the Samsung 850 EVO, it’s a bit of both.  The stunning silver and black design is as good as it gets in terms of storage devices and being 2.5″ really does add to the WOW factor.

The other part is the implementation of Samsung’s 32 layer 3D V-NAND technology which does get limited by the SATA3 interface but nevertheless, the Samsung 850 EVO is the best looking drive on the market currently and more than deserves the 2014 design award.

Performance – SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB

What can I say about the SanDisk Extreme PRO?  Well to start with, it has completely changed my brand allegiance in terms of SSDs; I was previously a huge fan of Samsung and Crucial.  It should be noted I still am, but SanDisks Extreme PRO really changed that and with their ethos on creating highly reliable offerings, I was shocked at the blistering speeds demonstrated by this drive.

Top performing read/write speeds, decent IOPS, superb untouched real world performance and of course being backed by a SanDisk 10-year warranty makes this drive the top performing SSD of 2014!

Value – Crucial MX100 256GB

2014 has been undoubtedly the year of the solid state drive; 2013 was also a good year but due to the technology and a company with huge cohonies to challenge the market, Crucial have effectively made the market accessible to those with tighter budgets.  So yeah, the Crucial MX100 which followed the previous MX500 range hasn’t just been a bit hit with budget consious consumers, but it packs enough performance to compete with drives a good deal more expensive.

The Crucial MX100 256GB is the best value 256GB SSD on the market today and in my opinion, a must buy for anyone looking to add the responsive snappiness of an SSD into their everyday system/laptop.  I would probably go as far as saying the MX100 is a game changer and has made other “reasonably priced” SSDs look rather expensive which is an impressive feat in itself.

Overall – Crucial MX100 256GB

This was a fairly tricky one to decide as with SSDs you do have the higher spec performance drives and of course the “cheaper” drives which use older technology such as the SandForce 2281; some drives do still use this controller but Marvell seems to be the controller of choice currently.  The only SSD I have seen in 2014 which combines all 3 aspects (performance/design/value) is the Crucial MX100 and you only have to read the review to see why it is the best all-rounded SSD of 2014!