OCZ Vector 180 480GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The review is being written prior to the release date which in return means that the prices here will reflect the manufacturers suggested retail price rather than actual store prices that may vary in both directions depending on location. We will update this part of the review once the drive has launched and it becomes available. The tested OCZ Vector 180 480GB SSD comes with a £224.99 MSRP which is pretty good for an entry-level server SSD. The 960GB will cost you £429.99, the 240GB £119.99, and the 120GB model can be yours for just £74.99.

Conclusion

The Vector 180 is OCZ’s new enthusiast and performance drive and it lives up to the category. The performance convinced throughout the benchmarks with transfer speeds up to 550MB/s at reading and 510MB/S at writing – just as advertised. The random read performance was equally impressive with up to 95K IOPS, a situation many other drives don’t handle so well.

The drive follows OCZ design line with a simple top in the series colours, in this case black, and with the company and series names printed on the top. Turning the drive around and having a look at the bottom and you see the information sticker with every bit of relevant information about the drive in itself, like capacity, serial number, product number, capacity and certifications.

OCZ is using a complete set of in-house hardware in the Vector 180. Inside the drive is the great Indilinx Barefoot 3 SSD controller that OCZ coupled with Toshiba’s latest A19nm NAND chips. This combination will not only give you a great performing drive, but also one that will last for a long time. It comes with almost all features you’d like including S.M.A.R.T., Trim, Garbage collection, and Power failure management plus protection. The only thing that’s missing a little bit, is the DevSLEEP power saving function. But on the other hand that’s a function that isn’t really relevant to a drive that is aimed at the home performance PC rather than ultrabooks and laptops.

The reliability becomes clear when we see the 50GB/day endurance rating of the drive. When we coupled that with OCZ’s amazing 5-year ShieldPlus Warranty, then you know you have a drive that will last a long time and one that you can get replaced easily and hassle free if the worst case scenario should happen and it fails.

OCZ also packs a great bundle with their SSD drives and it’s no different with the Vector 180 drive. It comes with both a 3.5-inch adapter bracket and a copy of the Acronis True Image disk cloning software. I’m convinced and this will be the future drive for my work and game station.

Pros

• Great performance
• 50GB/day endurance rating
• 3.5-inch adapter included
• Acronis Cloning Software
• 5-Year Shield Plus Warranty
• Good price

Neutral

• Occasional speed drops in ATTO. This is due to the new PFM+ mechanism and something that’s only visible in the synthetic benchmarks. It has no effect on the real-world performance.

“OCZ convinced us with Vector 180 480GB SSD. This isn’t just a great performing drive, but also one with one of the markets best warranty options, packed with features, and a great endurance rating.”

Thanks to OCZ for providing us with this sample