Specifications, Pricing and Availability

I think we've all see the general spec sheet for the Vertex 3 product line. This had to of been the most awarded SSDs in history thanks to solid performance and a very high marketing budget that put Vertex 3s in the hands of every reviewer on the planet. In most of the cases the 60-240GB drives were reviewed, but a handful of 480GB drives did make it out for the V4 512GB launch.

The 480GB Vertex 3 has the lowest IOPS, read and write performance of the Vertex 3 products. This was always a mystery to me until we got our hands on one. We'll cover the performance in depth today and see how the drive fairs and also talk about why the performance is reduced.

The all-important part with this drive is capacity and price. With 480GB of capacity, you simply can store more data on your high speed SSD. You can also store more data on the drive before it slows from SSD performance degradation as well, a very important thing not to be overlooked.

Then there is the price. On release the Vertex 3 480GB was really up there in price. At one time if memory serves correctly I think Newegg listed them at around $1700. Eventually the price dropped to around $1200 and it sat at that level for a long time. Today, using Google Product Search we found the largest Vertex 3 for just a pinch over $500. At that price I don't expect everyone to jump and get their wallet especially considering Newegg has the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe, another SF-2281 / synchronous flash drive for roughly $380. I don't see OCZ letting another company beat them in the price war for very long so there is a good chance OCZ will react and amaze the world with a price slash before too long.

The OCZ Vertex 3 480GB ships with a three year warranty, desktop adapter bracket, paper manual, sticker and mounting screws for installing your drive. The Vertex 3 480GB is still a 9mm z-height drive so you won't be dropping these in your ultrabook anytime soon, but the new Vertex 3 Low Profile take the Vertex 3 to 7mm.