There are a multitude of storage options, and you’re likely to come across eMMC and SSD storage types when shopping around, but which is right for you?
There are a lot of factors to consider when buying a new laptop, tablet, or desktop PC — and the kinds of components you’ll need will depend on your requirements. A gaming machine, for instance, will benefit greatly if you direct most of the budget towards picking up a solid graphics card. On the other hand, you might want to spend more on the CPU and RAM if you’re looking to build a workstation for development.
One factor that’s of equal importance in any use case is the storage — how fast it is, and how much of it you have at your disposal. We’ve largely switched over to SSDs given their compact form factors, fast read and write speeds, and better durability than mechanical hard drives. You may have also heard of eMMC storage being used in devices, especially on older tablets or laptops.
eMMC stands for Embedded MultiMediaCard, and is a type of storage that’s closer in principle to an SD card or an SSD than it is to a traditional spinning hard drive. eMMC uses NAND flash memory, which is also found in USB thumb drives, and benefits from its ability to retain data even when it’s not being supplied with power. The “embedded” bit in its nomenclature refers to how it is physically soldered onto the motherboard, as opposed to an SSD or an SD card that can be replaced effortlessly.
