Solid State Drives (SSDs) revolutionized PCs about a decade ago. While they existed earlier, their high cost limited them to industrial and enterprise use. Once they entered the consumer PC market, prices began to drop significantly. We started with SATA SSDs, and when M.2 drives emerged, it seemed there was little reason to stick with the SATA format. However, Kingston disagrees, having sold 100 million A400 SSDs since their launch nine years ago.
Early SSDs were perceived as very expensive components, seemingly not worth the investment. A mere 128GB SSD could cost over 200 euros. Even around 10 years ago, this capacity was limited, quickly filling up with just the operating system, common applications, and a couple of games. Despite games occupying less space back then, it was a luxury upgrade. Nevertheless, those who experienced it rarely reverted to traditional hard drives.
Kingston Highlights the Persistence of SATA SSDs with 100 Million A400 Units Sold Since 2017
The initial upgrade to an SSD from a hard drive was remarkable, transforming PC boot times from minutes to mere seconds. The frustration of the file explorer freezing, a common issue with hard drives, was virtually eliminated with SSDs. Now, Kingston reminds us that one of its early SSDs was a tremendous success: the A400 SATA model, launched in 2017, has surpassed 100 million sales.
This achievement is surprising given the current market trends where SSD prices are generally increasing, sales volumes are lower, and M.2 drives are more prominent than SATA. Yet, this record sales figure has been reached. This comes at a challenging time, as we previously believed that Samsung might completely cease SATA SSD production. Fortunately, this did not happen, and it’s fortunate because many users continue to purchase them due to their lower cost, sufficiency for their needs, or the lack of M.2 ports on their systems.
SATA SSDs Offered Speeds Up to 550 MB/s, Sufficient for Daily Use and Gaming
The Kingston A400 SATA SSD represented Kingston’s entry-level offering, boasting read speeds of up to 500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 450 MB/s. While these figures might seem modest compared to M.2 SSDs, it’s important to remember that the SATA interface itself limited speeds to approximately 550 MB/s, making these figures quite respectable. Furthermore, many users do not fully utilize the higher speeds offered by M.2 drives, so opting for a more affordable SATA SSD offered significant savings.
Personally, I still use a 1TB SATA SSD as a secondary drive and am perfectly content with its speed. Ultimately, the crucial step was the transition to SSDs, replacing HDDs that served as the primary drive, thereby eliminating the slowdowns and issues they caused with the operating system.
