OCZ Finally Gets a Toshiba Rebranding

When Toshiba first purchased OCZ nearly 2 and a half years ago, the two companies mostly left alone. The biggest change was probably the use of Toshiba NAND exclusively and a cash infusion for the finally troubled SSD maker. Over time, we saw more integration, with OCZ starting to use more Toshiba solutions in their SSDs. Now, the integration has been kicked up a notch with the new OCZ.com facelift.

On the new site, the Toshiba ownership is prominent front and center. Obviously, Toshiba wants customers to know that the SSD firm is part of the Toshiba conglomerate. The rebranding also stretches to the SSDs, with a Toshiba logo now stamped onto the Trion 150 and Vector 180. Speaking of which, the two drives have also been renamed as the TR150 and VT180. The highly anticipated RevoDrive 400 is also getting rebranded as the RD400.The changes reflect the OEM nature of Toshiba’s other products. Honestly, I can’t say I agree with the change as I believe the main reason for the OCZ purchase was to break into the client market, not just take it and leave it. I suppose the new names would appeal a bit more to an OEM or corporate buyer but it leaves behind the enthusiast OCZ heritage. At the same time, OCZ is moving all of their enterprise SSDs to legacy support, leaving that market to Toshiba branded drives.In addition to these changes, several other SSDs are being moved to legacy support. Most notable are the ARC100 and Vertex460A. Both drives offered pretty good bang for the buck so its a bit sad to see them go away. Hopefully, we’ll see some new OCZ SSDs to fill in the gap, perhaps at Computex.