No SSD? Why are laptop companies so sad?

Since 2010, KitGuru has been driving the notion that all systems should boot off an SSD. With the pricing on SSDs so competitive across the board – and laptop companies telling us how important battery life is – why do the vast majority of notebooks come with a cruddy old hard drive instead of a turbo-powered solid state drive?  KitGuru puts on war paint and goes to investigate.

SanDisk is one of the oldest and most trusted names in memory, so when we evaluated its ~£130 256GB Ultra Plus drive, we were not surprised to see it do well in the KitGuru Labs.

Take off the VAT and some margin for the reseller & distributor – and you can imagine that this product would cost around £80 in bulk from a factory in the Far East.

The terribly slow drives used by most of the laptop vendors might cost something like £30.

So we have a £50 difference for an SSD that will change your mobile computing life completely.

So why do weak-to-average laptops cost so much when you want a decent SSD in them?

.
In our opinion, it's just SAD that laptop companies have insisted on taking lots of really powerful components – and then putting the huge weight of a traditional hard drive around the laptop's neck, to ensure slow/cranky performance.

The price of SSDs was in free fall last year, so there's no reason for vendors to carry on crippling laptops with 5,400 drives.

KitGuru says: It's time for liberation without a huge price. More power for all please.

Comment below, in the KitGuru forums or join us on Facebook.

Become a Patron!