OCZ Agility SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive

Solid State Drives (SSD) are must have storage devices these days among enthusiasts. With their fast performance and low power requirements, there are a lot of pluses with this technology when compared to traditional hard drives. Granted, they do not yet provide the massive storage space of today’s consumer drives, and SSDs are far more expensive than those drives as well.

While SSDs have been available for awhile, the technology is relatively new. The OCZ Agility we will be reviewing today is OCZ’s newest SSD which addresses a few concerns many people have about SSDs. One is cost, as the Agility is aimed at mainstream users, at a lower cost per GB when compared to other performance drives:

“The new Agility Series of SSDs are the latest addition to the OCZ lineup of solid state drives and are designed for cost-conscious consumers seeking the performance and reliability benefits of SSDs at an aggressive price,” commented Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. “The new Agility Series drives make use of cache to deliver better performance over a wide range of functions and applications, all at a price point that makes sense for everyday users.”

Typically, “mainstream” is perceived as “flat and average”, but the Agility series is marketed as more than that:

“Featuring the latest controller design, exceptional speed, and onboard cache, the OCZ Agility Series delivers the performance and reliability of SSDs at less cost per gigabyte than other high speed offerings currently on the market. The Agility Series is the result of all the latest breakthroughs in SSD technology, including an efficient controller design, speedy 230MB/sec read and 135MB/sec write speeds, along with 64MB of cache. “

Finally, long term reliability is something of a question mark of many SSDs.  Initially, performance will be spectacular, but over time, many individual reviews have pointed out that performance begins to degrade. While this is not going to be possible to test with the timeframe we had, generally the degradation does level off and still offers performance that is better than traditional drives. That said, OCZ does provide a solid warranty and state the expected lifespan:

“Designed for ultimate reliability, Agility Series SSDs have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) ensuring peace of mind over the long term. All Agility Series SSD drives come backed a two year warranty and OCZ’s legendary service and support. “