State of Play

OCZ are no newbies to the Solid State Drive game as they’ve been one of the first companies to actually get on board with the fast storage technology. However the appearance of other brands have taken the spotlight away from them over the last few years. We last looked at a OCZ drive earlier this year, which was one of the first to use their new Indilix controllers. It was surprisingly good. (Check review here) Now they’ve sent us their latest Vertex 450 – their second attempt with the Indilix controller. Will OCZ bring it back?

  • NAND Components: 20nm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Flash
  • NAND Controller: Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10
  • Interface: SATA 3 6Gb/s (Backwards compatible with SATA II 3Gb/s)
  • Form Factor: 2.5″ – 7mm Ultra Slim
  • Weight: 115g
  • Street Price: $289 AUD
  • Review Unit Provided by OCZ Technology

As per usual, the Vertex 450 comes in a standard 2.5″ drive size, no different to anything else. The casing is well built like the OCZ Vector, which is something we like and the product does feel like it has weight to it in the hands. Underneath it, you’ll find the usual 4 points screw holes for mounting into a bracket or case and yes, a bracket comes included with the package.

Another inclusion with the Vertex 450 is the Acronis Cloning Software – for those customers wanting a bundled software to easily transfer data if you’re swapping drives out. Not all may need it but a handy inclusion no doubt.

We were given the 256GB model of the Vertex 450 to test out but the series is also available in 128GB and 512GB varieties if you require more or less space. However at the time of this review, the 512GB model has been discontinued from Australian retailers.

AS SSD Benchmarking

We use the latest version of AS SSD Benchmark software to test out the Vertex 450 SSD. We pit the SSD drive with the popular Samsung PRO 840 256GB drive for comparisons.

OCZ-Vertex450-AS-SSD

As you can see, the Samsung 840 PRO leads the way but only by a small fraction above the OCZ Vertex 450. The difference is pretty much minuscule and no one will ever see a huge difference in performance in real life.

Final Thoughts

Performance wise, the OCZ Vertex 450 is pretty much a market standard in terms of speed and functionality as you can see with the benchmark against the Samsung 840 PRO. The real difference here comes down to the pricing of the drive. The Samsung 840 PRO 256GB model is cheaper than the OCZ Vertex 450 256GB in the market coming in at an average $30 difference It’s not much but cheaper the better and people will also opt for the cheaper option especially when it’s a well known brand. The OCZ Vertex 450 has a tough fight at the moment, it’s a well built drive with a solid performance downplayed by a hefty price.

Pros:

  •  Good Performance
  •  Well Built Drive
  •  Included Bracket & Cloning Software

Cons:

  • Too Expensive