Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts
The OCZ VX500 from Toshiba is a strong contender in the mainstream sector of solid state drive offerings. We have seen many companies use 3D NAND or the less expensive TLC NAND for their drives in this sector, so it is interesting to see Toshiba go with MLC NAND, but their implementation is done quite well.

When it comes to performance in ATTO Disk Benchmark the drive scored read and write speeds of 549 MB/s and 518 MB/s respectively, which is right around its advertised speeds. If we look at our IOPS (4K, Q32) scores for read and write we see 93K and 64K respectively, which again hit the advertised speeds. Moving on to sustained the read test done using AIDA64’s Disk Benchmark we can see that the drive will read at the same speed across the entire drive, there is not much deviation at all.

Now when it comes to sustained writing we do see the drives one weakness, it makes use of SLC caching. I do have to note that this implementation of SLC caching seems to be much better than what we see on TLC-based drives. On those drives the sustained writing drops off after 5-10% through the test whereas with the VX500 it drops off around 53%. SLC caching is not something you are really going to need to worry about unless you are writing very, very large files to the drive with no down-time in between to allow the drive to flush the cache.

OCZ also has one of the best SSD toolbox software applications in their SSD Utility software. It allows you to benchmark, tune, secure erase, and update the firmware on your drive. This drive is backed by a 5-year Advanced Warranty from OCZ, which is one of the best and easiest to return warranty programs available for solid state drives.

Right now you can pick up the 512GB version of the OCZ VX500 at our favorite online retailer for $152.52. That puts it at $0.29 per GB, which is a great price. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score.

Award 9 out of 10

Pros:
– Great overall performance
– Uses more reliable MLC NAND
– SLC caching seems to be implemented better than TLC-based drives
– 5-year OCZ Advanced Warranty
– OCZ SSD Utility Software

Cons:
– SLC caching will eventually slow the drive down

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