Out of all the products we reviewed in 2011 some of my favorite were Solid State Drives. So many companies have pushed the envelope when it comes to transfer speeds we were very impressed with almost all of the solid state drives we reviewed in 2011. There were a few drives that really stood out to us and that is what you will find on this list. Keep in mind that this list is comprised of drives that we have reviewed only. Read on to see what our favorite solid state drives of 2011 were!
OCZ RevoDrive 3 (Review)
OCZ’s RevoDrive has been a very unique and interesting product since we saw the first version of it back in 2010. What OCZ has done with the RevoDrive is take solid state drive transfer speeds to the next level by eliminating the SATA bottleneck and using a PCI-E interface. Not only have they done that they have basically placed 2 solid state drives on the card and have them running in a RAID configuration for the best speeds possible. So what type of speeds are we talking about? In our testing we scored a read speed of 996MB/s and a write speed of 903MB/s in ATTO Disk Benchmark! Almost to the 1GB/s mark! OCZ does have a RevoDrive 3 X2 that has 4 drives on one card and that drive does break the 1GB/s mark, but we did not have the chance to review it. If you are looking for one of the fastest solid state drives available the RevoDrive X3 from OCZ is it!
Kingston HyperX Solid State Drive (Review)
Kingston is mainly known for Memory and their first jump into the solid state drive market with the SSDNow Series of drives did not make that much noise at all. We all know the HyperX line of products as being Kingston’s high-end products so it was about time we got a HyperX solid state drive. The first thing that I said when I saw the drive was, “Damn that is a sexy drive!”, it is really is why its brushed aluminum finish and blue accents. But besides just looking great it does perform good as well. In our testing we scored a read speed of 559MB/s and write speed 525MB/s in ATTO Disk Benchmark. With these speeds it is the fastest 2.5-inch SATA 6GB/s drive we tested this year! Kingston sent us the upgrade kit which comes with a desktop mounting bracket, external USB enclosure, Acronis migration software, blue SATA 6GB/s SATA cable and a pretty nice screwdriver. This is everything you will need if you are upgrading from a normal SATA drive. Also surprisingly enough the upgrade kit and and standalone drive are the same price!
Corsair Force Series GT Solid State Drive (Review)
You know only a few years ago Corsair was only really known for memory and now look they have products in many different categories, but not only that their products are in the top of many of those categories. For example the Corsair Graphite Series 600T case made it into our Best Cases of 2011 list! It is really great that Corsair is taking the time to produce quality products. We’ve seen so many companies try and branch out and they make sub-par products or just release OEM products under their own name. The Force Series GT is Corsair’s fastest SATA 6GB/s drive. In our testing we scored a read speed of 557MB/s read and 513MB/s write in ATTO Disk Benchmark. Besides just the fast speeds the drive is a very attractive red color. The Force GT is also one of the most affordable drives out there, the 120GB version goes for $199 online, whereas other 120GB drives are around $230-$250.
So that is our list of our favorite solid state drives from 2011. Do you think another drive deserves to be on this list? Let us know in the comments!
You fail to mention that the revo drive has no added value for an average user, or even a demanding one. It’s place is really in a stressed server. Futhermore the throughput speed of an ssd is really not all that interesting. IOPS (especially at 4K random) are much more interesting and really determine how speedy a solid state drive is.
RevoDrive 3 Max Random Write 4KB: 130,000 IOPS
I am sure that Samsung 830 series deserve to be on every list mentioning the best solid state drives in 2011. It is a young product lineup, I know, but every people in prohardver.hu forum (in Hungary) is more than satisfied with an instance of that. They seem to be not just fast and reliable, but their compatibility seems to be one of the most luring feature for the people. Thus the speed of 830 series on the product sheet are closer to the reality (tests) than most of the other products out there its price/value ratio sounds very fair.
Ah come on! “very unique”?