The best cheap SSD deals in May 2018

There are a lot of ways you can upgrade your computer. A new CPU can boost its operating speed. More RAM can get you multitasking like crazy. Slapping in a shiny new graphics card can take PC gaming to the next level. But, an SSD can help speed up just about everything you do on your computer, and it's all the better when you can find cheap SSD deals.

If you only have a hard drive with a spinning disk, upgrading to an SSD is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to give your computer a substantial boost in speed. Even if you’re already booting from an SSD, you may want more room to add programs and games to keep running everything at top speed – after all, once you’ve experience solid-state storage speeds, you never want to go.

Here, we’ll take a look at which SSDs offer the best storage and performance for their price. Whether you need an SSD for gaming, for a laptop or for a high-speed PCIe slot, we’ve dug up the best deal for you.

Best M.2 SSD deal

Adata snipes the spot for best M.2 SSD deal, with a PCIe 3.0 x4 drive that offers high performance and storage for a price well below the competition. While many M.2 PCIe SSDs cost a fair bit more than their SATA counterparts, the SX7000 manages to keep its prices in league with SATA SSDs. 

And, because it’s a PCIe drive, it can take advantage of the incredibly high bandwidth offered by this connection, giving you the most of its advertised 1,800MB/s sequential read and 850MB/s sequential write speeds. Top that off with fast random read and write times and a 5-year warranty to boot, and you’ve got a killer SSD that only gets better when you spot the price tag.

Best SATA SSD deal

No list of the best SSDs ever seems to be complete without the Samsung 850 Evo, which consistently ranks among head of the pack. While the 850 Evo is available as an M.2 and mSATA drive, it’s the standard 2.5-inch drive that proves time and time again to be an SSD you can’t go wrong with.

The 850 EVO comes in a number of different storage sizes, letting you choose what’s right for your budget. With fast read and write speeds, and reliable 3D NAND backed up by a 5-year warranty, the 850 Evo is a great drive from a respected brand. Though the price can fluctuate a bit, now’s a great time to pick one up – especially after the introduction of the Samsung 860 Evo.

Best budget SSD deal

The Crucial MX500 SSD offers incredible value, giving you plenty of storage per dollar. It comes in the standard 2.5-inch drive size, so it should fit in any standard desktop build, and will also fit in plenty of laptops. 

On top of the MX500’s great value is its great performance. Despite the budget price, the MX500 is built using fast, high-endurance 3D NAND flash storage, and comes with a 5-year warranty to back it up. It’s speeds reading and writing data, both big and small, also keep up with the competition.

Best laptop SSD deal

Looking to upgrade your laptop? SanDisk has the answer. The SanDisk Ultra II offers great value and performance per dollar, and with the standard 2.5-inch drive size and only 7mm thickness, it should fit in a wide range of laptops.

The SanDisk Ultra II’s speeds keep up with its closest competitors, but at the 500GB sweet spot, it undercuts the price of other drives. This makes it a sweet pick for a laptop upgrade. It comes with a 3-year warranty. 

Best external SSD deal

Western Digital has an external SSD that’s worth the price. While plenty of other external SSDs warrant serious consideration of building your own external SSD by just buying a normal SSD and a USB enclosure separately, the WD’s My Passport manages to offer a price that’s only slightly higher than an internal SSD of the same size. Plus you won’t find a third-party enclosure smaller than the WD My Passport SSD.

Supporting USB-C and USB 3.1 Gen 2, the My Passport external SSD is capable of fast communication with a PC. It’s also small and light, with dimensions of just 1.8 x 3.5 x 0.39 inches and a weight of 1.44 ounces. Of course, with portability comes the question of security, but the My Passport includes 256-bit encryption to keep your data safe from intruders, and it’s drop-tested up to 6.5 feet to keep your data safe from accidents.