OCZ Vector 150 (120GB & 240GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on November 7, 2013 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- OCZ
- Indilinx
- Vector 150
Final Words
The Vector 150 is a logical successor for the Vector. It doesn't redefine SSD performance, yet OCZ has managed to add enough improvements to the Vector 150 to make it a different product. The first one is IO consistency. While the Vector had good performance consistency to begin with, the Vector 150 takes that one step further. It's without a doubt one of the most consistent (if not the most consistent) SSDs we have tested and that's a big achievement. Especially for heavy workloads with lots of random writes the IO consistency is a very important performance metric because the drives tend to be in steady-state (or close to it) due to the amount of writes and you definitely don't want your application to be waiting for your SSD.
The second major improvement is endurance. 50GB/day for five years should cover almost any power user's need for endurance (or if not, you should really invest in an enterprise class SSD). Remember that it's 50GB seven days a week for five years -- even one day with less writes a week will give you even more headroom to play with.
Power consumption is the only thing I have a problem with. For desktops the power consumption obviously plays no role (unless you're building a huge RAID array and want it to be as power efficient as possible) but for mobile it's one of the cornerstones. Battery life is one of those things where you can never have enough and while the rest of the components usually play the bigger role, an SSD can still have an impact of half an hour or so depending on your laptop.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (11/6/2013) | |||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | |
| OCZ Vector 150 (MSRP) | $130 | $240 | $500 |
| OCZ Vector | $125 | N/A | N/A |
| OCZ Vertex 450 | $115 | $220 | $460 |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $100 | $180 | $340 |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $128 | $215 | $570 |
| Crucial M500 | $120 | $155 | $370 |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $150 | $230 | $460 |
| Seagate SSD 600 | $110 | $200 | $380 |
With the original Vector OCZ shifted their goals and tried to lift up their brand image by focusing purely on the high-end segment and the Vector 150 continues that strategy. As a result, the Vector 150 is definitely at the upper pricing segment but there is always a price you have to pay for performance. Compared to SanDisk's Extreme II, Vector 150's most likely rival, the MSRPs are fairly competitive. At 120GB, the Vector is cheaper but at higher capacities SanDisk has a small advantage. However, it's good to keep in mind that we're dealing with MSRPs, so take the prices with a grain of salt until we see what the retail prices end up being.
All in all, I'm excited to see what OCZ has up their sleeve for their SATA Express (i.e. PCIe) based Barefoot 3 successor. We've been limited by the SATA 6Gbps bus for quite a while already, which is why there haven't been any tremendous upgrades in performance compared to what for example the SF-2281 brought when it was first released. The Barefoot 3 is a platform with lots of potential and it shows that OCZ's Indilinx and PLX acquisitions have provided the company with the knowledge they need to stay competitive in the SSD space.
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Kristian Vättö - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
With very light usage, I don't think there is any reason to pay extra for an enthusiast class SSD, let alone enterprise-grade. Even the basic consumer SSDs (like Samsung SSD 840 EVO for instance) should outlive the other components in your system.LB-ID - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
OCZ as a company has, time and again, proven their complete contempt for their customer base. Release something in a late alpha, buggy state, berate their customers for six months while they dutifully jump through all the hoops trying to fix it, then many months down the road release a bios that makes it marginally useful.Not going to be an abused, unpaid beta tester for this company. Never again. Will lift a glass to toast when their poor products and crappy support ultimately send them the way of the dodo.
profquatermass - Friday, November 8, 2013 - link
Then again I remember Intel doing the exact same thing with their new SSDs.Life Tip: Never buy any device on day #1. Wait a few weeks/months until real-life bugs are ironed out.
Kurosaki - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
Where is the review of Intels 3500-series?and why aren't the bench getting any love? :-('nar - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
I am surprised by all of the negative feedback here, they must all be in their own worlds. Everyone can only base their opinion on their own experiences, but individuals lack the statistical quantity to make an educated determination. I have been using OCZ drives for three years now. The cause of failure of the only one's that have failed have been isolated, and corrected. A "corner issue" where a power event causes the corruption of the firmware rendering the drive inert, corrected in the latest firmware.1. REVO is "bleeding edge" hardware, expect to bleed
2. Agility is cheap crap, throw it away
3. Vertex and Vector lines have been stable
It is interesting how many complain, yet do not provide specifics. Which model drive? What motherboard? What firmware version? I do not care for the opinions of strangers, you need to back it up with details. People get frustrated by inconvenience, and often prefer to complain and replace rather than correct the problem. As I said, I use OCZ on most of my computers, but I install Intel and Plextor for builds I sell. Reliability and toolbox are more practical for most users, and Intel is among, if not the top, of the most reliable drives.
hero4hire - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
Much of the hate has to do with how consumers were treated during the support process. I can only imagine if a painless fast exchange for failed drives was the status quo we wouldn't have the vitriol posted here. OCZ failed at least twice, with hardware and then poor support.lovemyssd - Sunday, November 24, 2013 - link
right. no doubt thereof comments are from those playing with their stock price. That's why genuine users and those who know can't make sense out of the bashing.KAlmquist - Sunday, November 10, 2013 - link
The review states that the Vector 150 is better than the Corsair Neutron in terms of consistency, but the graphs indicate otherwise. At around the 100 second mark, the Vector 150 drops to around 3500 IOPS for one second, whereas the Neutron is always above 6000 IOPS. So it seems there is a mistake somewhere.CBlade - Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - link
How about that Toshiba second generation 19nm NAND that Kristian mentioned? How we can identify part number on this new SSD? I want to know if the NAND its better or not.