While still very quick even with the write speeds halved, this certainly takes a lot away from the X25-E, especially in regards to the possibility of using it as a boot partition. While the first run through writing to the disk would be very quick indeed, reusing hard drive space nullifies the huge write speed performance advantage, making the X25-E somewhat of a disappointment, especially considering its £505 price tag.

The capacity itself is also a real sticking point -- these days 32GB is nothing in terms of storage, and was barely enough space to install Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit and Crysis. While we love the idea of a fast writing, fast reading drive for use as a boot drive, it needs to actually be able to fit more than the operating system onto it to make it a realistic option.

In comparison, the MLC based Intel X25-M doesn't suffer from the same re-write speed problems thanks to MLC using storing data using multiple states per cell, is more than twice the size at 80GB, costs £50 less, and has near identical read performance.

If you're in the market for a high end SSD we'd certainly still point you in the direction of the X25-M rather than the X25-E, although for the majority of you, a high speed 1TB drive will likely meet all your storage needs and will also be much more wallet friendly -- the excellent Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB can be had for as little as £73.

Although we love the idea of a fast writing, fast reading, all round speedy hard drive, the X25-E isn't quite there yet. While write speed post-format is impressive, re-write speeds are doubled and read speed is no better than the cheaper, larger mainstream version of the drive. While we're sure fast writing SSDs like the X25-E will find a place in highly specialised business setups, there's just no way such a small and ludicrously expensive drive should find a space in your home system, even if your budget can stretch to it.