Considering the breakneck one-upsmanship we saw among early SSD makers, record-setting iterations have been slower to arrive over the last two years with 2012's Samsung SSD 840 Pro series maintaining relevance among a laundry list of competing options after price cuts brought it from $1.05 per gigabyte to $0.74 a gig.

That works out to $190 for the 256GB 840 Pro, which is fair but puts the aging enthusiast series in an awkward position just beyond today's finest budget options, including Samsung's own 840 Evo ($0.57 per gig for 250GB) and the $0.43/GB Crucial MX100, which is beside the point that not everyone wants a cut-down drive.

That's not to say there isn't already a plethora of high-end SSDs. Enthusiasts have loads of options with Plextor M6S, SanDisk Extreme Pro, OCZ Vertex 460, Intel 730 Series, Crucial M550 and some we forgot to list. However, few if any models stand out as being uniquely fast in the same way that we expected a few years back.