The Best SSDs for Laptops of 2026

Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB

Formats: 2.5-inch

Warranty: 3-year warranty

The SanDisk Ultra 3D NAND SSD comes in a wide variety of form factors and capacities, and it's very, very similar to the Western Digital WD Blue. That's not surprising, given SanDisk acquired Western Digital a few years ago and all these drives are limited by the SATA III interface.

In our performance tests, the Ultra 3D SSD managed to slide right in among the middle of the pack, only narrowly behind our fastest SSD, the Samsung 860 EVO, and slightly ahead of our value pick. As with the others drives, it’ll be a very fast upgrade over a hard drive but you won’t notice a huge jump over other SATA III SSDs.

Our only hangup with the SanDisk Ultra is its 3-year warranty, which is a bit behind the 5-year warranty that most of the competition offers. SanDisk does allow you to write to the drive significantly more frequently per day while still honoring the warranty, though, so certain applications that use the drive constantly (such as a security system), may find it to be better suited to their needs.

Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB

Formats: 2.5-inch, M.2, mSATA

Warranty: 5-year limited warranty

The venerable Samsung 850 EVO has been considered the SSD to get for years now. But at this point, it is just about off the market and the prices are fluctuating wildly. That said, if you can find it on deep discount for less than other current models, it’s worth picking up.

For most people, we’d recommend getting the newer 860 EVO, especially as it’s faster and typically cheaper since the 850’s stocks are basically all but spent. But if you come across one at a clearance price, just know that you’re getting a drive that can still easily compete with the best on the market—especially if you're using the slower SATA III standard anyway.

Capacity: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB

Formats: 2.5-inch, M.2, mSATA

Warranty: 5-year limited warranty

If one thing is clear from our testing, it's that most modern SSDs perform about the same when using the most common SATA III and M.2 connections. Outside of some newer high-performance NVMe drives that we'll test later this year, most people simply should find the cheapest drive that works for them and go with that—especially if that drive offers a 5-year warranty.

The Crucial MX500 definitely checks those boxes, and at 250 and 500GB it was as cheap as any other drive we tested. The one thing that held it back from our top value pick? The higher capacities were consistently more expensive.

Still, if you want a great, affordable SSD at 250GB or 500GB, the Crucial MX500 is as good a pick as any. It did perform ever so slightly worse than the best drives, but not enough you'd notice with regular use.

Capacity: 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB

Formats: 2.5-inch

Warranty: 3-year limited warranty

The Kingston A400 SSD performed admirably in our round of testing, but it didn’t do enough to make up for the fact that it offered lower capacity and typically cost more than comparable drives in this round. Though the capacity differences weren’t massive, an extra 20 to 40GB does make a difference.

The Kingston A400 was the only drive we tested to come in a sub-240GB size, which is great if you have a limited need for storage capacity and want a great all-around SSD. We don’t recommend drives that small for PCs or game consoles, but it’s a good option to have.

The higher price, average performance, and shorter 3-year warranty period were enough to keep the Kingston A400 from threatening the top spot, but if you find it on a killer sale and it fits your needs there’s certainly no reason to avoid it.