OCZ Vector 150 240GB SSD Review

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The OCZ Vector 150 LS 240GB (1GB byte = 1,000,000,000 bytes) drive yields 223Gib (1Gib = 1,073,741,824 bytes) to the user after over provisioning and Windows formatting have their share. This is in contrast to the original Vector which had less over provisioning and yielded 238GiB.

There’s not a ton new with with Vector 150 with a few notable exceptions although we’ll start with what hasn’t changed and that’s the controller. The Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller is the very same as found in the original Vector drive and puts out some impressive performance with reads of up to 550MB/s and writes up to 530MB/s. OCZ has improved sustained performance which they claim is industry leading and has added 256-bit AES-compliant encryption which was a feature lacking in the initial Vector drive. New for this version is 19nm Toshiba NAND flash which despite the smaller geometry is afforded a generous 50GB/day for five years endurance rating, partially at the expense of expanded over provisioning.

Capacities available are 120GB, 240GB and 480GB and are set to be priced at $129.99, $239.99 and $499.99 which are all less than what the original Vector retailed for. For the 240GB drive, this comes out to be roughly $1.07 per usable GB which is at the high end of what we see on the market for SSDs but the enthusiast level drives always command a premium. Along with the drive you get a 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter plate and a license key for the 2013 Acronis drive cloning software which helps sweeten the pot.

All in all we are as impressed with the Vector 150 as much as we were the original Vector drive and the changes bring it more inline with the top tier drives from their industry counterparts. With CES right around the corner, OCZ is sure to face some tough new competition as we expect to see new controllers from several companies announced soon.

Legit Bottom Line: The Vector 150 is a natural progression from the initial Vector drive with a shrink in NAND architecture and similar performance with addition of 256-bit AES compliant encryption.