Looking for a budget solid state drive? Intel just released a new line of SATA drives, the 540s series, which might be perfect for you. You can buy them right now.
At 80 millimeters thick, and available in both the M.2 and 2.5-inch form factors, Intel’s 540s series drives starts at $80 for a 120GB drive, and top out at $450 for an entire terabyte.
If that pricing doesn’t sound competitive to you, that’s because it’s not. Sellers seem to know this: the drive is heavily discounted on NewEgg. Here’s the 480GB drive for $150, for example, a $70 discount over the listed price. Here’s the 1TB model for $300, a $150 discount. We’ve put together a rundown of each drives and its MSRP, but keep in mind that there are already heavy discounts out there.
That read speed of 560 megabytes per second is above average for a budget SATA SSD, assuming benchmarks agree with Intel’s marketing. The write speeds are also typical, though the 120GB drive noticeably loses out its big brothers.
Overall, it seems like a decent range of budget SSDs priced just a little too high, but if the trend of retailers undercutting the listed price continues, we could see these becoming a good option. They’re not the fastest drives we’ve ever seen, and they’re not the cheapest, but Intel is known for making reliable drives.
If you’re still using a mechanical hard drive, upgrading to a solid state drive is probably the best way you can improve your current machine. These drives are significantly faster, meaning things like booting and opening large files is close to instant. Price point has long been a problem, so the more affordable drives that enter the market the better.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.