Image courtesy Samsung

Colour me impressed. Hot on the heels of Samsung’s XP941 Solid State Drive – a drive similar in size to a large USB memory stick which was already capable of 1.4 gigabytes per second read speeds – the Korean company has now unveiled its successor which is even more mind-blowing. The new SM951 SSD not only manages to blow its predecessor out of the water with blazing fast speeds of 2.15GB/s read and 1.55GB/s write (tested on PCIe Gen 3 tech), but also consumes 50% less power during operation, thanks to utilising new 10-nanometer MLC flash tech. This same smaller, more power-efficient technology also means that the drive uses barely any power when idle – a mere 2 milliwatts, in fact. The SSDs will come in 128, 256 and 512GB sizes; and at first will be exclusive to major laptop manufacturers – but if it turns out to be a TRUE successor, expect to see it in laptop models from even lesser names soon enough.