Imation M-Class SSD 32GB review

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Verdict:

Imation's M-Class 32GB SSD has too little storage and is too expensive to be a practical replacement for most laptop hard disks.

Review Date: 9 Jul 2009

Price when reviewed: £107

Buy it now for: £103
(see more store prices)

Supplier: http://www.kikatek.com

Reviewed By: Alan Lu

Our Rating 2 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Solid-state disks (SSDs) are more rugged than hard disks and can be dramatically faster, too, but they also tend to be much more expensive.

Imation's 32GB M-Class is the cheapest internal SSD laptop disk we've seen, but its small capacity limits its usefulness.

Like other SSDs, the M-Class is silent and generates little heat, which are useful traits for a laptop hard disk. Unlike some SSDs we've seen, it didn't improve the battery life of our laptop, though at least it didn't decrease it.

Its inconsistent performance in our file-transfer tests was disappointing. It read large files at 78.3MB/s and small files at 80.9MB/s, which is almost as quick as a 7,200rpm desktop hard disk. It was much slower at writing files, though. Large files were written at 25.8MB/s, while small files were written at a particularly sluggish 12.6MB/s.

Imation's M-Class may be cheap for a SSD, but unless you particularly need rugged storage, its inconsistent performance and high cost per gigabyte of £3.25 means it's not a good buy.

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