Introduction

It's come to my attention that more than a few of you aren't ready to go back to paying more than $250 for an SSD. I get it, I really do. Low cost LSI SandForce controllers and OCZ itself pushed SSD prices so low that anything over $1 per GB seems excessive. Over the last couple of months a handful of premium SSDs hit the market and pricing has crept back up to 2011 levels. The higher prices have led to an outcry for us to get back into testing smaller capacity units, an area we started to get away from in 2012.

The move back into smaller capacity sizes caught some companies off guard since most of the industry shifted to cover the 256GB capacity size or larger. So, instead of waiting for the industry to catch up we stepped up to deliver what you asked for, next gen SSD reviews in lower capacity size. In order to decrease the latency we went out and purchased the OCZ Vector 128GB on our own.

Today we're looking at the new Indilinx Barefoot 3 controlled Vector 128GB in a different light. This is a product purchased with my money and it was my time waiting for it to arrive. Today's article isn't just a review, but a look at the whole experience starting from the initial purchase to the excitement of loading the drive in my computer.

Today I'll be the judge and I want you to participate as the jury. At the bottom of every page is a comment section. Give your two cents, chime in with your thoughts, and let us know what you want to see. This month I'm putting the final details on some new benchmarks that'll make it into all of the SSD reviews in 2013; you'll get introduced to another new one today. Make sure you give us your feedback and be heard at the end of the review.

Our OCZ Vector 128GB was purchased at Newegg on 12/4/12 for $159.99 and we upgraded the shipping to UPS Ground 3-Day for an additional 1.99. Newegg shipped the drive on December 5th and it arrived around Noon December 7th.

Let's take a look at the specifications and then see what arrived in the package.