OCZ Vertex 2 100GB SandForce SF-1200 SSD Review

Free Capacity and Final Thoughts

Capacity

When it comes to storage capacity, the OCZ Vertex 2 100GB SSD has a free capacity of 93.1GB as shown above. The drive has 128GB of MLC Flash memory on the PCB, so about 27% of the drive’s capacity is reserved for the Sandforce DuraWare wear-leveling technology.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The OCZ Vertex 2 is an ideal successor to the original Vertex series as it has proven to be one of the fastest SSDs that we have ever seen here at Legit Reviews. It was able to give the Intel X25-M G2 160GB SSD and Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB drives a run for their money in many of the benchmarks. We were able to reach read speeds of up to 280MB/sec. and write speeds
of up to 238MB/sec in ATTO on the Vertex 2. We have been benchmarking SandForce controllers now for several months and they appear to be very strong and have so far proven to be one of the contenders in the SSD controller market. In fact, it is no wonder that Corsair, Patriot, Super Talent and other SSD companies have followed OCZ’s lead and begun using the SandForce controller in their own SSDs.

When it comes to pricing, the Vertex 2 100GB drive that we tested here today was $398.99 shipped. With a total free capacity of 93.1GB this means that you are paying $4.29 per GB of
storage space. This is price competitive with other SSDs with the SF-1200 controller as the Corsair Force 100GB uses the same controller and is listed at $409.99 shipped. If you want a SandForce SF-1200 based drive the OCZ Vertex 2 is the best buy on the market this very second. If you have $400 to spend on an SSD then you might find yourself looking at the Intel X25-M Gen 2 160GB SSD as well. That was one of the
drives that we compared this one to and while it couldn’t compete in the write speeds it makes up for it with capacity. The Intel X25-M has 149GB of free space with a street price of $419.99
shipped, which comes out to be $2.82 per GB. The OCZ Vertex 2 is clearly the faster drive, but be ready to give up some storage space for the extra speed.

After spending a few weeks with the OCZ Vertex 2 we have found it to be a very impressive SSD and we like it so much it will be going into our notebook for some long term use to see how it performs with daily use and abuse. We have an upcoming trip to Taiwan to cover Computex 2010 and this drive should improve battery life while performing better than nearly every SSD on the market. What more could you want?

Legit Bottom Line: The OCZ Vertex 2 100GB SSD is one of the fastest we have tested and takes the Vertex series to the next level!