The new Vector SSD from OCZ sports the Barefoot 3 controller, which is the company’s first in-house controller. It comes in different capacity flavors, 128GB, 256 and 512GB and succeeds to wipe the floor with most other models we have tested so far, from other manufacturers.

When pitted against the Vertex 4, which was incorporating the Indilinx Everest 2 NAND controller, we have seen noticeable performance increases, but some of the firmware features the Vertex 4 was incorporating were also carried to the Vector, like the one when the SSD uses performance mode if the drive is filled less than 50%.

The Vector comes with no less than 5 years of warranty (20GB host writes per day) and the 256GB version should be enough for most applications; on the market it can be found for about 225 Euros. However, if we want to use the SSD only as a boot drive, without many space-consuming apps installed, we could also take a look at the 128GB version, which is available for about 130 Euros.

For added value, OCZ has also included the cloning software from Acronis, which we have used for some time now, and we find it very useful for transferring even complete Windows partitions, without the need of re-activating the installations.

OCZ Vector 256GB SATAIII SSD is Recommended For:

I would like to thank again to OCZ for making this review possible!