And laptops with hard disk drives are (almost) extinct.
Storage business bean counter According to Trendforce, the price of 512GB SSDs is now comparable to 500GB HDDs for laptops and about the same as 256GB SSDs were six months ago. During the height of the pandemic, when the work-from-home movement was at its peak, SSDs were in high demand, as were many other computer parts. As a result of the laws of supply and demand, SSD prices were subpar. However, as 2022 has progressed, TrendForce has observed a significant decline in SSD demand and pricing. TrendForce provides additional insightful observations and forecasts regarding the SSD market and bit expansion, higher capacity SSDs, and laptop attach rates.
This year, the average capacity of a consumer SSD has surpassed 500GB. One of the reasons for this phenomenon is that 512GB SSDs are priced similarly to 2.5-inch 500GB HDDs and 256GB SSDs were priced similarly six months ago.
We compared the prices of several popular SSDs on Amazon and discovered the following:
| Product | Price six months ago | Price Today |
| Western Digital 500GB WD Blue SA510 SATA | $54.90 | $39.99 |
| Crucial P3 500GB PCIe Gen3 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD | $55.20 | $39.99 |
| SAMSUNG 980 PRO 500GB PCIe NVMe Gen4 | $105.50 | $95.50 |
Are 500GB SSDs less expensive than 2.5-inch HDDs of comparable capacity?
The best price reduction noted in the table is approximately 30%. However, we discovered that several 250GB SATA and NVMe SSDs were available for less than $50 six months ago (such as WD BLACK 250GB SN770 NVMe and Crucial MX500 250GB 3D NAND SATA).
Also, if you want an alternative to a high-performance 2.5-inch 7,200-RPM HDD, you can find one on Amazon for between $37.99 and $59.27 (Seagate BarraCuda Pro SATA 500GB and Western Digital WD Black WD5000LPSX SATA 500GB). There are slower 2.5-inch 500GB SATA hard drives with 5400RPM available for significantly less money ($20).
According to TrendForce, Windows licensing will prevent the average capacity of a pre-built PC from reaching 1 terabyte or more. It describes how PC Windows licensing fees are proportional to devise specifications, such as SSD storage capacity. Therefore, it will be some time before 1TB+ SSDs become affordable enough to justify deployment in devices in the economy or value series, where every penny counts.
There is a diminishing likelihood that laptops will include HDD storage. TrendForce predicts that by 2022, 92% of all sold laptops will be SSD-equipped. The firm predicts that in 2019, the SSD attach rate for laptops will reach 96%, further marginalizing HDDs.
Microsoft is said to encourage OEMs to adopt UFS solutions for entry-level computers with less storage space. Even though 128GB SSDs are becoming scarcer, recent price drops for SSDs and NAND have made OEMs reluctant to switch to UFS, especially since the faster UFS 3.1 is not supported by Wintel machines.
If you are in the market for storage, please review our recent article on the Best SSD and Hard Drive Deals.
