Review: OCZ's Vertex 450 SSD delivers solid top-tier performance

OCZ's newly released Vertex 450 SSD is a solid top-tier performer. It's not quite as fast as the company's top-of-the-line Vector, but it's close, and certainly fast enough for the average user. At around a buck a gigabyte it's also good deal in a fast 7mm profile, SATA 6Gbps drive.

The Vertex 4 uses 20nm, MLC NAND. Unlike the Vertex 4 with its older Indilinx Everest 2 (Marvell hardware/OCZ firmware), said NAND is marshaled by a derivative of the all-OCZ IndliLinx Barefoot 3 controller used in the Vector. Whatever the designation, it's very fast.

What stood out about the Vertex 450 was the nice balance between read the write performance, which placed it in the fifth spot overall of the 20 or so drives we've tested. The drive wrote our 10GB mix of files and folders at 407.9MBps and read them at 385.8. With a single large 10GB file that jumped to 626.9MBps writing and 447.5MBps reading. CrystalDiskMark placed the drive in the top ten with an excellent write performance rating buoying its slightly below-average sequential read rating.

Those numbers reflect our experience with the 256GB version of the Vertex 450. The 512GB model's performance should be only a hair slower, but there will be a drop-off with the 128GB version due to fewer channels. This could be anywhere from mild to significant, but a 128GB version was not available to verify. As with all brands, the 240/256GB and larger capacities offer the best performance.

OCZ's pricing guidance for Vertex 450 is $130 (128GB), $235 (256GB), or $500 (512GB), but street prices were slightly hire at press time. All three models are warranted for three years based on an average of 20GB of writes per day. Most users write considerably less than that and can count on a good deal longer lifespan. That said, if you want the longest lifespan, over-provisioned 120GB/240GB/480GB drives could be what you want.

The Vertex 450 is fast drive, reasonably priced, and a nice addition to the OCZ portfolio.  It should certainly be on your short list unless you're looking for absolute bleeding edge.