After biding its time for a couple of years, memory manufacturer Corsair has now decided that it also wants a share of the solid state disk (SSD) pie. The company has just introduced its first SSD, the S128, which Corsair says is the first in a new range of SSDs.

The S128 is primarily targeted at the mainstream market, and has what appear to be comparatively conservative read and write speeds of 90MB/sec and 70MB/sec respectively. However, Corsair was keen to point out that there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to quoted read and write speeds. Unlike many multi-level cell (MLC) SSDs, not including Intel’s, the S128 features a Samsung controller, as opposed to the often-used JMicron 602 controller.

This could prove to be a very wise decisionon Corsair’s part, as SSDs with the JMicron 602 controller, such as OCZ’s Core series, have proven to write at almost half the speed of drives based on Samsung controllers in some tests, with reports of the controller causing pausing and stuttering when handling random write tasks. This also corresponds with our own tests, in which an OCZ Core SSD failed to live up to OCZ’s quoted write speed of 93MB/sec, dropping down to 32.4MB/sec in our write speed tests.

As such, Corsair is confident that its S128 drive will be able to meet its quoted read and write speeds, although it will cost more than the aforementioned drives based on the JMicron 602 controller. As well as the Samsung controller, the drive will also feature 128GB of specially-selected Samsung NAND chips.

Corsair also promises that faster drives will be on their way in the future, although no details have been revealed as yet. In the meantime, the S128 is now available for pre-order from Scan for £326.54 inc VAT.