In the current market there are still many laptops , especially those cheap entry-level ones, that come with a traditional mechanical hard drive, so it is understandable that many users who acquire one of these laptops want, sooner or later, to replace that disk with a SSD, as it will significantly increase the performance of the laptop. If this is your case, you are probably in doubt about which SSD to buy for your laptop , so this article is to help you.
In this article we are not going to teach you how to change the hard drive of your laptop to install an SSD (because for that we already have another tutorial), but we intend to help you choose which is the best option depending on the laptop you have, your needs and of course from your budget.
2.5 inch or M.2, which SSD to choose for your laptop?
The offer in solid state devices that we find in the current market includes basically two formats: 2.5 inches or M.2. You must understand that we are talking about the form factor and not the interface, although it is true that currently all 2.5-inch SSDs have a SATA 3 interface. The important thing here is that before launching to buy one or the other format, you should check what your laptop is compatible with, and if you intend to replace a mechanical hard drive with an SSD, from now on we tell you that you will almost certainly need a 2.5-inch SATA3 SSD .
It is possible, on the other hand, that your laptop has one or more M.2 sockets available to be able to add storage units. You will have to investigate the characteristics of the laptop to verify the existence of these, but more importantly if your laptop supports booting from these sockets, since in some models these are designed only as secondary storage, and if the laptop is not capable of booting from these devices will earn you nothing. You should also check if these M.2 sockets have a SATA or PCI-Express interface before choosing the SSD you need.
What capacity do you need in your laptop?
Now that you know what format and interface you need, the usual question is what capacity to buy the SSD, and this is quite important because as you may already suppose, the higher the capacity the more expensive they are. Your budget or what you want to spend on the device comes into play here, since you have 240 GB models for about 30 euros and you have models with up to 4 TB capacity that cost several hundred euros.
What we are going to recommend here is a “type” capacity depending on the use that you are going to give the laptop, a kind of reasonable middle ground so that you have an idea of what capacity you will need depending on the type of use that you are going to give the equipment (bear Take into account that we will talk for example about 500 GB for 480, 500 and 512 GB SSDs, since their capacity will depend on the type of memory they use):
- Portable for occasional and office use : with 250 GB you will have enough, 500 GB being ideal not to be short.
- Portable for work : depending on the type of work; if it is office automation and online with 250 GB you will have plenty, but if you work in professional edition you will need all the capacity you can afford.
- Gaming laptop : normally with 500 GB you will have plenty to install a lot of games, but if you can afford 1 TB drives you will ensure that you do not run out of space quickly.
What SSD should you buy?
We have already seen in general terms what type of SSD you will need for your laptop, the reasonable middle ground being a 2.5 ″ SSD with SATA 3 interface and 500 GB capacity. Since removing a hard drive to put an SSD in a laptop is a task that is not to anyone’s liking since it involves a lot of work (not only to disassemble one and mount another, which is simple, but because of having to clone the disk or reinstalling everything from scratch in the SSD) we would recommend always looking for SSDs that have enough durability (expressed in TBW) to last the longer the better.
Thus, if we were to recommend a specific unit with these characteristics, we would opt for a Crucial MX500 as it delivers excellent performance and in terms of performance / quality / durability / price it is the best currently on the market.
