SSDs are brilliant, but unfortunately we're still waiting for pricing to become a little more mainstream. While we haven't quite gotten there yet, OCZ is doing its part by introducing the new Onyx II drives that get a little closer to the holy grail of £1/GB.
The normal sacrifice with 'cheaper' drives is that the controller is either older or of lower quality, resulting in lacklustre performance. While this may have been true of the original Onyx series, it certainly isn't a complaint that can be levelled against these drives. These SandForce-based SSDs promise read speeds of up to 270MB/s, write speeds of 265MB/s and 10,000 random-write 4k IOPS.
Obviously, the drives also include TRIM support to keep performance consistent even after months of use.
As with the previous generation SSDs, OCZ is positioning these drives as a relatively affordable upgrade, and the pricing is certainly competitive. Cost per gigabyte for the smaller of the two drives is around $1.58 (£1.23 inc VAT), which is significantly cheaper than comparable drives at similar capacities.
Unfortunately, the new Onyx II SSDs will only be available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, meaning that even the 'cheaper' of the two will cost $190 (£148 inc VAT). The higher capacity model will retail for $440 (£343 inc VAT), putting it at a significantly less cost-effective $1.83/GB (£1.42/GB).
Despite the high cost of entry, it's good to see prices continue to fall without sacrificing performance. This release should also put increasing pressure on other manufacturers to drop their prices to remain competitive. Unfortunately, though, OCZ hasn't given any indication on when these drives will be available in the UK.
