Corsair this afternoon said it had started shipping the P256, its fastest and also most capacious solid-state drive. The 2.5-inch SATA II drive holds its namesake 256GB thanks to multi-level cell storage but has a fast Samsung controller that lets it read data at 220MB per second and writes at an equally quick 200MB per second. A 128MB cache and native command queuing further add to the practical speed.

As with most solid-state drives, the P256 is more energy-efficient than a rotating drive and is estimated by Corsair to give roughly 25 percent more battery life. Shipments have already started, though the company hasn't made pricing public.