OCZ Vertex 2 120GB review

It's incredibly fast at writing files, but slow read performance and a high price heavily detract from it.
Written By
Published on 10 August 2010

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OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Our rating
Reviewed price £255 inc VAT

OCZ has a staggering range of SSDs and the 120GB Vertex 2 is one of its latest models. It connects to your computer using a SATA II port. Unlike some other SSDs we’ve seen, which come with data transfer kits, the Vertex comes with just screws and a mounting bracket for fitting the 2.5in disk inside a desktop PC’s 3.5in drive bay. What matters most with a SSD is performance, though. The Vertex uses the latest SandForce controller, so we had high hopes that it would speed through all our tests. While it did do well in some of our tests, it was more sluggish in others.

OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
It wrote large files at a chart topping 126.3MB/s, but read them at just 91.7MB/s which is slower than most hard disks. This pattern repeated itself in our small files tests. It was very quick at writing small files, again topping the table at 103.2MB/s, but fell behind when reading them, managing just 55MB/s which is the slowest speed we’ve seen from a SSD. Despite its slow read speeds in our file transfer tests, it still managed to load a Crysis level in a fast 27 seconds although other SSDs shaved a few more seconds off this time.

The Vertex’s inconsistent performance is all the more disappointing given its high price of £255 and fairly high cost per gigabyte of £2.13. Even if you can find it a bit cheaper elsewhere, if you have this much money to spend on a SSD then you should get the blazingly fast Crucial C300.

Written by

Alan Lu is currently external communications manager at Vodafone UK and has a background in corporate communications and media writing. An alumnus of The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), he has previously served as reviews editor for IT Pro and Computeractive.

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