Great review as always, I might consider moving all my Steam/Origin/Uplay games collection (which is roughly ~2TB) to an SSD like this in the not too distant future, while having a "higher-end" smaller SSD for OS and just a few more "demanding" games. Price is still not quite there, but it's on the right path. 🙂 Also nice to find out about OCZ ShieldPlus warranty system, sounds great!

Great review as always, I might consider moving all my Steam/Origin/Uplay games collection (which is roughly ~2TB) to an SSD like this in the not too distant future, while having a "higher-end" smaller SSD for OS and just a few more "demanding" games. Price is still not quite there, but it's on the right path. 🙂 Also nice to find out about OCZ ShieldPlus warranty system, sounds great!

Don't forget to symlink Steam\SteamApps\Downloading for lightning fast Steam updates: http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=5088805&postcount=11

Interesting review, thanks Hilbert, as always. I was interested in how OCZ now presents itself on the market, and like you mentioned in the conclusion, how reliable they are. I've had an OCZ Vertex 2 EX as my first SSD, and I was a bit disappointed to have it see dying just after two years, not too long after warranty ended. So a three years guarantee and an additional plan, combined with the presumably low failure rates looks good to me! As I'm not sure I will be buying a Samsung SSD in the near future (twice burned with two 840evos and the crappy magician software and no fix for the hardware issue therein), I'm trying to get a glimpse on how the competition is doing.

So I have one thing on my mind here that I've been made aware of this last few days of reading a few SSD reviews... Samsung made it's 840 EVO TLC based drive on a 19nm process - all seemed fine until they later started dropping like flies... For the 850 EVO TLC drive they reverted to a 40nm process for better durability. So why would this OCZ 19nm TLC drive be better than Samsung's dramatic failure ?

The 840 EVO drive looks like it's been fixed with the latest firmware update that came in April. That's my experience with my 840 EVO drive too. Read Speed of Old Data is now no longer an issue with the latest firmware. I would be a bit wary of buying this OCZ drive for fear of a similar problem being exposed.

What an absolute dog of a drive compared to the competition, you would have to not know about any competition in order to buy this junk.

Yes, the performance of this drive is pretty woeful, which didn't really seem to come accross in the Conclusions of this article, but Toms Hardware did a review of this drive and was quite clear that it comes bottom of the pack in terms of performance, and that the only saving grace will be if they lower the price further to make it competetive. The 850 EVO is a far better buy, because performance is dramatically better and the same price. Here's the review: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ocz-trion-100-series-ssd,review-33254.html

I mean, performance is a thing to discuss, but power...? 5W of power, who cares about that with a gaming rig that easily uses 500W or more? edit: Unless you plan to buy one for a laptop replacement or similar things, of course. Still you're right, Samsung and Cruicial are the ones to get, just like in the past months / years.

Mobile, mobile, mobile.

Yeah, true, didn't think about that. Don't have a laptop though, so I usually don't consider mobile devices, my bad.

Yup, the firmware update definitely helped from what I heard about the net, I thought it was fixed too. Sadly reading the following excerpt from a current [H]ard|OCP review makes the firmware patch sound like it is only a band aid slapped on a critical wound and will only slow the inevitable down (in some cases?) - I certainly have not heard such a negative slant against the 840 drives before this, but Samsung abandoning 19nm makes it look bad. Perhaps the 40nm process is partly required for the new 3D NAND construction and 19nm is not actually all That weak for NAND transistors?:

That excerpt you quoted is just a general description of the problem (and a not wholly accurate description either I don't think), it's not specifically proving or disproving that the latest firmware for the 840 Evo has been fixed or not. From everything I've read on the internet & from my own experiences with my 840 Evo drive - Samsung have fixed the Read Speed Degradation of Old Data issue, doesn't seem like a band aid to me, I think it's a permanent fix. Also haven't read of any or many outright failing 840 Evo drives. (My understanding of the 840 Evo problem was a Voltage Drift issue which slowed down the ability of the drive to read Old Data in the cell - the new firmware has created better algorithms or better 'calibrations' to read the cell even if it has drifted in voltage. It looks like the new firmware will also rewrite a cell if it detects the voltage has drifted too far (thereby restoring it to optimum voltage), so it should be a permanent fix).