Corsair Releases Neutron XT SSD Series Pricing

The Corsair Neutron XT 240GB SSD looked pretty good when we took a look at an early production sample last month, but we weren’t given any guidance from on pricing. Overnight we received word that the official estimated street pricing before any sales or rebates would be as follows.

• Corsair Neutron XT 240GB – $149.99 ($0.62 per GB)
• Corsair Neutron XT 480GB – $269.99 ($0.56 per GB)
• Corsair Neutron XT 960GB – $539.99 ($0.56 per GB)

Corsair hopes that these prices will allow the Neutron XT series to be competitive with the offerings from Samsung, Sandisk, and Crucial. The Corsair Neutron XT Series uses the all-new Phison PS-3110-S10 controller with Toshiba A19nm MLC NAND to achieve up to 560MB/s read and 540MB/s write speeds along with 100,000 IOPS read and 90,000 IOPS write. This makes is a premium drive and that means it should be able able to compete with similar drives on the price/performance front. The Samsung 850 Pro series is very similar with in terms of performance ratings as the 4KB Random IOPS are identical and the max sequential speeds are slightly lower at 550MB/s read and 520MB/s write. The prices on similar capacity drives are as follows for the Samsung 850 Pro series. Keep in mind that you also get an Assassin’s Creed Unity game code with the purchase of a Samsung 850 Pro right now thanks to a promotion.

• Samsung 850 Pro 256GB – $174.99 ($0.68 per GB)
• Samsung 850 Pro 512GB – $339.99 ($0.66 per GB)
• Samsung 850 Pro 1TB – $599.99 ($0.60 per GB)

Corsair comes in at a slightly lower cost, but will it be enough to lure consumers away from the number one SSD maker in the world? We’ll find out in the weeks ahead when the Neutron XT is finally released. Corsair plans on shipping the Neutron XT series after Christmas and has issued a new and improved firmware since our review was published over a month ago. Hopefully we’ll be able to take a look at a drive with the latest firmware on it around launch time.