Granted, not everyone has the SSD hoarding issues that I have. But if you’re looking for a speedy, roomy M.2 drive to boot your system off of, or stash your media library for quick access, Intel’s 660p has been one of the most-affordable (and fast) options for several months now. And today, you can grab the highest-capacity 2TB model for just $175 on Newegg (which is the lowest price we’ve seen apart from some brief blips from third-party sellers). You’ll need to use code EMCTDWT25 to get the deal. And as usual with Newegg’s codes, you may have to subscribe to the company’s email newsletter for the code to work, although it’s still on sale for a decent $185 sans promo code.
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As we noted in our review of the 660p, there are some negatives with this drive that are worth considering. For starters, it’s a QLC drive, which means its endurance is lower than most competing models. But unless you’re legitimately hammering the drive every single day for years on end, you shouldn’t have issues there; the 2TB model is rated to 400TBW, or about 220GB a day for the five years of the warranty.
The drive can also get very slow if you manage to fill up its SLC cache during extended massive write workloads. But unless you are moving massive file libraries from a similarly speedy second drive, or doing something similar demanding, you won’t likely run into that issue either. I’ve been using this specific drive in my main system every day for months and have been very happy with it. Sure, there are drives that are faster, but the 660p strikes a great balance of speed, features and performance, especially at this sale price.
