OCZ’s Apex SSD’s Offers Great Speeds, Modest Price

Where Solid-State Disks are concerned, we’re in a great place right now. Think back to just one year ago, when SSDs as a whole were becoming much, much more popular. Everything about them was great. Quiet operation, fast speeds, the physical size… not too much to complain about. Well, except the price, of course. That has been the biggest hitch with SSDs ever since their introduction, but even that is greatly improving as each week passes.

Take Intel’s ultra-fast X25-M, for example. The 80 GB model was introduced this past September for around $599, and today, one can be had for under $399. When eyeing facts like that, it makes it impossible to say that “now is the time to go SSD”, because we know very-well that next month we’ll be seeing even better models, for even less money.

But, if you believe you’ve held off long enough and want to plop down some dough for some great SSD drives, OCZ’s new Apex series looks to deliver just what we’re looking for. Our friends at PC Perspective have taken their 250 GB model (~$889) for a spin, and the results are impressive. It doesn’t manage to keep up to Intel’s X25-M in terms of Read performance, but it storms past it where the Write is concerned.

While the 250 GB is the model likely to be skipped over, given its price, the $379 120 GB model seems much easier to stomach. That drive still offers great speeds, but comes in a bit cheaper than Intel’s drive. Plus, it offers faster Write speeds. What’s not to like?

As for pricing, the Apex drives are going to be a bit more expensive than some other similarly-sized drives but should be lower cost than the Intel X25-M drives it is competing with. The 60GB model will retail for $209, the 120GB model for $379 and the 250GB model for $839. Yes, that is a lot of cash for 250GB of storage but the real sweet spot right now is likely the 120GB version that sells for well less than half of the 160GB Intel X25-M price (currently selling for $889 or so). If you have the budget for two then you could theoretically pair up two of those drives for 240GB of capacity at the same price.