Which ssd for my laptop?

[JEDI]

Laptop= 12.5" Dell e5250 (haswell i3-4030u) with 500meg hd running win7.

I just surf the web and do light Excel with it.

I have a $20 off coupon at microcenter.
Their 2 cheapest ssd are:
SanDisk 120gig ssdplus
Kingston 120gig ssdnow uv400

Both $55. ($35 with coupon)

I am used to the ssd speeds on my desktop and the slow bootup of my laptop is driving me nuts.

So which ssd is better?

 

[cfenton]

They are both planar TLC drives, so don't expect much from either of them, especially at that size. Though, either will be much better than an HDD. I'd go with the Sandisk since it's slightly faster, but I doubt you'd be able to tell the difference between the two.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Laptop= 12.5" Dell e5250 (haswell i3-4030u) with 500meg hd running win7.

I just surf the web and do light Excel with it.

I have a $20 off coupon at microcenter.
Their 2 cheapest ssd are:
SanDisk 120gig ssdplus
Kingston 120gig ssdnow uv400

Both $55. ($35 with coupon)

I am used to the ssd speeds on my desktop and the slow bootup of my laptop is driving me nuts.

So which ssd is better?

That is not such an easy question since it depends on a number of factors.

If you don't stress it too much then performance may be similar, if you do stress it just a bit more performance may suffer for the SanDisk SSD Plus given that it is DRAMless.
See:

While the Kingston UV400 performs a bit better it may also consume more power than the SanDisk SSD Plus since it lacks support for both HIPM/DIPM and DevSLP seems to be turned off.

 

[Charlie98]

I'll tell you from experience that the ~120GB SSD's can be a bit slow when compared to even a ~256GB SSD, but any 120GB will be faster than a laptop HDD.

My personal experience with a Kingston Hyper X has been good (20K hours and still rolling...) and based on what GM said above, I'd probably go with the Kingston.

 

[JEDI]

Hmm.. they have a micron m550 256gig bulk oem ssd for $70 - $20 coupon = $50.

What do u think of this vs the 120gig ones for $35?

 

[cbn]

Hmm.. they have a micron m550 256gig bulk oem ssd for $70 - $20 coupon = $50.

What do u think of this vs the 120gig ones for $35?

I would get the M550. (Marvell Controller with DRAM buffer and 20nm MLC NAND).

My second pick would be the UV400 (Marvell controlller with DRAM buffer and 15nm Toshiba TLC).

 

[Charlie98]

I'd get the M550 simply because it's a 256 vs 120GB... the performance difference between those two sizes is marked. I also like the Crucial drives... I've replaced all of my SSD's with Crucial, including an 840Pro and a Plextor.

 

[Glaring_Mistake]

Hmm.. they have a micron m550 256gig bulk oem ssd for $70 - $20 coupon = $50.

What do u think of this vs the 120gig ones for $35?

Well, it does avoid the performance issues the SanDisk SSD Plus has (and to some degree the UV400).
And it has support for some of the lower state modes so it should draw a bit less power than the UV400 when idling and it may have a bit better efficiency in use.
Here's a chart where you can compare idle power draw for the UV400 and a number of drives (should mention that the M550 draws 0.0763 watts so it'll be easier to find it):

 

[JEDI]

ugg.. the micron 256gig ssd was a msata:
Micron M550 256GB SATA III mSATA Internal Solid State Drive (Bulk-OEM).

my laptop is the Dell e5250 (Intel Haswell cpu) that I bought last year.
no idea if the mSata ssd works in the M.2 slot.
and since it's bulk-oem, it doesn't come with the mSata caddy adapter bracket to put into the hard drive slot.

so I bought the SanDisk 120gig ssdplus for $35 since my goal was a cheap upgrade.