Super Talent has launched a new budget line of solid state drives that will compete against similar offerings from Intel, Kingston and OCZ. Starting at $65, the new VSSD range promises an affordable way into the flash storage world with "no compromise in performance" – but before you get too excited we should note that there will be a compromise in capacity. That price will get you 8GB of storage, or half the minimum required for a 32-bit installation of Windows 7.
It won't exactly deliver on the performance promise either, with sequential read and write speeds of 90MB/s and 30MB/s respectively. A 16GB model will offer the same read and write speeds as the 8GB unit, while the larger 32GB drive will raise them to 150MB/s and 60MB/s, and a range-topping 64GB model offers 150MB/s and 100MB/s. You can expect to pay $175 for the latter, which puts the drive up against Kingston's equivalent SSDNow series offering.
Unfortunately, no specific pricing is mentioned for the models in-between. For your reference, Intel is offering the 40GB X25-V with read and write speeds of 170MB/s and 35MB/s for around $120, while OCZ has the 32GB Onyx delivering 125MB/s and 70MB/s speeds with a price tag of just under $100.