Best 500/512 GB NVMe SSDs for Laptops
SSDs have become one of the most important components in a laptop or gaming PC. Switching your boot drive from a traditional Hard disk to an SSD makes a huge difference in your overall user experience making it much snappier and drastically reducing load times of applications and in-game. Installing an SSD in your system is one of the easiest upgrades you can do to your laptop enhancing your experience and with most AAA titles being over a 100Gb these days getting a 512 GB (or 500 GB) SSD can be an excellent purchase so here is a list of some of the best 512 GB (or 500GB) SSD for laptop available in the market right now.
1. Seagate FireCuda 530 500GB NVMe SSD
Founded in 1978, Seagate is the oldest Hard Drive manufacturer in the world and the FireCuda 530 is the best consumer PCIe Gen 4 SSD offered by Seagate. It has a sequential read and write speed of 7000 MB/s and 3000MB/s and Random IOPS of up to 400K read and 700K write making it faster than most SSDs in the market. The FireCuda 530 also comes with a heatsink installed which is excellent for laptops because it helps the SSD keep its temperature down and keep its performance up. A big reason to go with Seagate is the inclusion of the Seagate Rescue Data Recovery Services for 3 years along with its 5-year-long warranty. Seagate also includes their DiscWizard and SeaTools software which can help you to easily clone your current drive to the new drive and format, transfer and back up data and also monitor the drive’s health and performance which is great.
2. Samsung 980 PRO 500GB NVMe SSD
Samsung is one of the best memory manufacturers in the world so to no one’s surprise the 980 pro from Samsung is one of the best Gen 4 500GB NVMe SSD for laptop you can buy in the current market. The 980 Pro has a sequential read and write speed of 6900 MB/s and 5000 MB/s respectively which when paired with its 1GB of DDR4 SDRAM cache makes this SSD one of the fastest consumer SSDs in the market right now. The SSD is also backwards compatible with PCIe Gen 3. As for IOPS on PCIe Gen 4.0, we get up to 800K Random IOPS for reads and 1000K IOPS for writes. The 980 Pro also comes with Samsungs Magician Software which you can use to check the drive health and do a TBW check along with performance benchmarks and optimisation and you can even encrypt the drive which is excellent.
3. WD Black SN850 500GB NVMe SSD
The WD SN850 is one of the fastest consumer PCIe Gen 3 NVMe 500GB SSD for laptop available in the market right now. It has a sequential read and write speed of 7000 MB/s and 4100 MB/s respectively with up to 680,000 IOPS for a smooth and responsive gaming experience which is great. Some of its other notable specs would have to be its inclusion of DDR4 DRAM cache along with Westen Digitals in-house controller for excellent sustained performance and it also comes in a variant which includes a thermal heatsink for the SSD. The Western Digital Dashboard is included with the drive which includes tools for analysis of the disk such as its firmware version and its SMART attributes and updating the drive’s firmware which is great. At its price of Rs 13600, the 500GB version cost Rs 13.6 per GB which is amazing considering its performance compared to other alternatives which make it one of the best 500GB SSD price in India.
4. Crucial P5 Plus 500GB NVMe SSD
Crucial and in turn Micron is one of the largest memory manufacturers in the world and the P5 Plus is the best PCIe Gen 4 SSD offered by Crucial. It has a sequential read speed of 6600 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 4000 MB/s along with up to 360K and 700K random IOPS read and write respectively which is great. The P5 Plus comes with 1GB of DDR4 DRAM cache paired with its excellent Micron memory controller means you can expect great sustained performance from this SSD. The Crucial Storage Executive is Crucial’s free software tool to check the health of your SSD, monitor its temperature, and Encrypt the drive and the Momentum Cache feature, which makes many SSD operations up to 10x faster. If you are in the market for a 500GB SSD NVMe, then the P5 Plus is a very reliable option.
5. Kingston KC3000 512GB NVMe SSD
Founded in 1987, Kingston is one of the oldest flash memory manufacturers in the world and the KC 3000 is the best Gen 4 SSD that Kingston has to offer it is also the fastest consumer Gen 4 SSD in the world with a sequential read speed of 7000 MB/s and write speed of up to 3900 MB/s. With its excellent Phison E18 controller and random IOPS of 450K read and 900K write you can expect a very responsive and smooth experience. Even though the SSD doesn’t have a dedicated heat sink it still comes with a low-profile graphene aluminium heat spreader which with its exceptional thermal dissipation it keeps your drive cool for maximum performance. If you are in the market for the fastest 512GB SSD for laptop then the KC3000 is an excellent pickup.
6. Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB NVMe SSD
Samsung has one of the best SSD catalogues in the market and when it comes to PCIe Gen 3 SSDs the 970 EVO Plus is one of the best Gen 3 NVMe SSD available in the market right now. When it comes to sequential read and write speeds of 3500 MB/s and 3200 MB/s respectively along with random read IOPS of up to 480K and random write IOPS of up to 60K for a smooth and responsive experience. Unlike most SSDs in this range which uses QLC memory, Samsung SSDs use 3-bit MLC NAND which is much more reliable and it’s one of the biggest reason to buy a Samsung SSD. Another great thing about the 970 EVO Plus is that it has 512MB of LPDDR4 DRAM cache which along with the Samsung Phoenix controller means it has great sustained performance.
7. Samsung 980 500GB NVMe SSD
Launched early last year, The 980 is one of the most unique SSDs in the market because its Samsungs first DRAM-less SSD and instead uses HMB caching. HBM cache is generally inferior in terms of performance to DRAM SSDs but with Samsungs excellent memory and execution the 980 can still hit sequential read and write speeds of 3100 MB/s and 2600 MB/s respectively which is just amazing for a DRAM-less SSD. With the industry-leading Samsung V-NAND 3-bit MLC memory, random read IOPS of up to 400K and write IOPS of up to 470K paired with their new Samsung Pablo Controller, the 980 is one of the best 500GB SSD for laptop in the market and it is also the cheapest NVMe SSD offered by Samsung with the 500GB variant priced at Rs 4949 which means Rs 9.9 per GB making it an excellent value for money option right now.
8. WD Blue SN570 500GB NVMe SSD
Launched in late 2021, the SN570 is the long-awaited successor to the WD SN550 which used to be a go-to option for people who needed an NVMe SSD on a budget but unlike its predecessor, it doesn’t compromise on performance. The SN570 can hit sequential read and write speeds of 3500 MB/s and 2300 MB/s respectively which is a roughly 50% improvement compared to the SN550. Even though it is a DRAM-less SSD, it goes neck and neck with Samsungs 980 in terms of both price and performance. The SN570 also uses a new memory controller manufactured in-house by WD which provides Random read of 360K IOPS and random write of 390K IOPS assure that you will have an excellent and smooth experience. WD drives also come with a free month of Adobe Creative Cloud Subscription and the Western Digital Dashboard which allows you to monitor your drive and update its firmware.