eMMC or SSD? Differences and comparison between data storage devices

Computer storage devices are finally changing in recent years thanks to SSDs, increasingly efficient, fast and smaller in size compared to the old and slow traditional hard disk. After seeing the differences between SSD and Hard disk, and having explained what the M.2 SSDs are, let's now see what the eMMC card ( embedded MultiMediaCard ) is and why on many new laptops released the last year you will find eMMC instead of SSD or HDD as storage unit.
While we now know that SSDs are clearly superior to traditional HDDs because they are faster to load data, it is also interesting to find out what the differences are between eMMC and SSD, with a comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of both.

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What is eMMC?

At first glance, the eMMC appears to be a type of solid state drive because it has no moving parts and is quite fast. the eMMC is, however, more similar to an SD or microSD card, with the same basic standard and the same type of operation, so much so that eMMCs are also mounted on smartphones and tablets.
EMMC storage is made up of NAND flash memory, the same thing as USB flash drives, SD cards and solid state drives (SSD), which does not require power to store data. Although both contain a type of NAND memory, SSD and eMMC memory are however quite different.
The main difference between SSD and eMMC is in the fact that while the SSD units can be easily removed and replaced, an eMMC is soldered onto the motherboard so, in case you want to replace it, you first change the laptop and buy a new one. This is also the reason why laptops with eMMC only cost less, because in fact they have a storage memory included in the motherboard.
At the moment, the highest capacity eMMC that can be found is 128 GB or 256 GB (very rare at the moment). If you saw a computer advertised with the word eMMC 1 Tb, take into account that Tb stands for Terabit and is not the same as saying TB that stands for Terabyte. One TB equates to around 125 GB.
The largest SSD available, however, should be at the moment of 60 TB, but this is a limit that is exceeded every month. Even the eMMCs that will come out in the coming months or years will be getting bigger, even if it will take a really long time to reach the SSDs.

eMMC vs SSD: performance differences

If we opened an SSD, we would see several chips inside that look like SD cards. These chips can perform many read / write operations alternating with each other and thanks to an efficient management of the internal chips, the entire SSD will last a long time.
Inside an eMMC, however, there is only one chip on which all the required reading and writing tasks are performed. Since there is only one chip, the eMMC has a shorter life span than an SSD of the same capacity.
At the same time, while on the SSD the internal chips work simultaneously by passing data across multiple roads, while the eMMC, with a single chip, is like a single lane. If it is true that you can run at the same speed on both, access to the single road is still slower .
For this difference in performance, as well as for durability, it does not take much, therefore, to understand why an eMMC laptop costs much less than a laptop with SSD and why in most low-cost laptops an 32 or 64 eMMC is included GB.
A laptop with eMMC is therefore one of those of 200 or 300 Euros good for surfing the internet and writing documents or term papers, but it is certainly not the computer for working with heavy programs or for playing games. Also on a laptop with eMMC the space to save files will always be quite limited and you will have to resort to the cloud to be sure not to lose important data in case the computer should break. As mentioned above, in fact, the eMMC units cannot be disassembled from a laptop, therefore, if it does not turn on again, it will be very difficult to recover the data saved inside it.