It's still early days, but so far in 2020, SSD prices don't appear to have skyrocketed to alarming levels. Reason for optimism is that Mashkin's new Pilot-E series is now available on Amazon at an affordable price.

Affordable is relative, of course, but in this case that means $74.99 for the 500GB model and $249.99 for the 2TB model; a 1TB model is also listed but is not yet in stock and no price is mentioned.

Mashkin's new SSDs combine 3D triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory with a Silicon Motion 2262 controller. They ship in an M.2 form factor and take advantage of the PCI Express 3.0 bus (NVMe interface) to deliver speeds that are more than worth the price.

Until PCIe 4.0 SSDs come to market, speeds will not increase significantly, and an X570 motherboard is required to take full advantage of these drives' capabilities.

I am happy to see Mushkin coming out of the gate with a relatively aggressive pricing structure. Just a few weeks ago, there were multiple reports that SSD prices could spike this year due to the rising cost of NAND flash memory chips. A power outage at one of Samsung's factories spurred this speculation.

"Actual demand for NAND flash products has exceeded off-season expectations, but supply growth appears to be conservative and suppliers are reducing inventories. Therefore, we expect contract prices for NAND flash products to continue to rise in Q1 2020," TrendForce said in early January.

It could still happen, but so far it has not. Also, these new Mushkin drives are not very promising in terms of price movement, but it is a good sign.

Mushkin's pricing is generally on par with its competitors. For example, this 2TB Adata XPG SX8100 sells for $249.99, the same as the 2TB Pilot-E, with a slightly slower sequential write speed (3,000MB/sec). Also, the Pilot-E has 4K random read and write speeds of 339,000 IOPs and 358,000 IOPs, respectively, while the Adata models have 290,000 IOPs and 240,000 IOPs. In other words, on paper, they are faster for the same amount of money.

The 1TB model will arrive soon, probably priced around $149. Meanwhile, the other two are all available now; all three come with a three-year warranty.