OCZ Vertex 450 solid-state drive

This low-cost SSD competes well with Samsung and Seagate drives

OCZ Vertex 450
  • OCZ Vertex 450
  • OCZ Vertex 450
  • OCZ Vertex 450
  • Expert Rating

    4.00 / 5

Pros

  • Excellent read and write speeds
  • Low cost per GB

Cons

  • Other drives are faster outright
  • Samsung 840 Pro is cheaper

Bottom Line

OCZ’s Vertex 450 is a strong contender in the mid-range, enthusiast solid-state drive market. It competes directly with Samsung’s well-regarded 840 Pro and Seagate’s SSD 600.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 259.00 (AUD)

If you’re looking to speed up an old or even a new PC or laptop, buying a solid-state drive is one of the smartest choices you can make.

OCZ’s Vertex 450 is a relatively cheap, still-super-fast SSD that is largely comparable to the current market leaders.

OCZ Vertex 450: Design and setup

The OCZ Vertex 450 is a standard-size 2.5-inch solid-state drive, measuring 99mm long, 69mm wide, and 7mm thick. It weighs 118 grams and has four screw holes in its outer edges, along with another four underneath.

This is a nice, simple and unpretentious-looking SSD; there’s a sticker on top that identifies it as a Vertex 450 and touts its Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller — although if you’ve got this far, we presume you already know what you’ve bought.

Rounded corners and an anodised mid-grey finish are neither especially attractive nor ugly. On the bottom are all the drive’s serial numbers and identifying data.

The OCZ Vertex 450, like any other modern SSD, is a SATA3 drive, and as such it has a standard SATA connector and power cable — you’ll be able to install it in any modern desktop PC or any modern laptop, as long as it’s not an ultra-portable using the smaller mSATA standard (like the Acer Aspire V7.

The Vertex 450’s retail kit includes the drive itself in a protective anti-static bag, a packet of eight counter-sunk and standard screws for case-mounting the drive, and a 3.5-inch caddy for mounting the drive in a desktop PC case. There’s also a nifty OCZ sticker.

OCZ Vertex 450: Specifications and performance

The Vertex 450 we tested was a 256GB model; it’s also available in 128GB or 512GB capacities. The 256GB model just breaks through the $1/GB barrier in Australia, with street prices hovering around or just above the $250 mark — making it equal with competitors from Samsung, Seagate and Corsair, all of which are similarly priced. Being a 256GB drive, you get about 238GB of formatted space — 15GB more than a ‘240GB’ SSD.

Sequential read speeds in CrystalDiskMark hit 494MBps, around 28MBps slower than our fastest-ever result from the Samsung SSD 840 Pro. In general, the Vertex 450’s results are near that of our class leaders, making it a strong contender. As one of the fastest SSDs we’ve tested, there’s a definite advantage in buying the Vertex 450 over any traditional mechanical hard drive, as long as you don’t mind the trade-off of less overall storage space.

Performance table

This table shows how the OCZ Vertex 450 256GB model performed against some other recent solid state drives that we've seen, as well as some thin and ultra-thin mechanical drives.

OCZ Vertex 450Seagate SSD 600Samsung SSD 840 ProOCZ Vertex 3.20Seagate Laptop Thin SSHDSeagate Laptop UltrathinWD Blue Slim
Capacity256GB240GB256GB240GB500GB500GB1TB
Thickness7mm7mm7mm9.3mm7mm5mm7mm
Weight118g78g54g87g91g89g88g
Flash typeSynchronous MLCMLCToggle-mode MLCSynchronous MLCMLCn/an/a
Plattersn/an/an/an/a111
CDM* read494.0MBps519.8MBps523.9MBps471.9MBps110.4MBps117.4MBps115.2MBps
CDM* write473.9MBps458.3MBps500.2MBps312MBps109.7MBps115.6MBps114.8MBps
File duplication240MBps265MBps265MBps192MBps46.08MBps38.43MBps44.28MBps
Battery lifen/a3hr 2min3hr 1min3hr3hr 2min3hr 5min3hr
Cold bootn/a19sec19sec19sec24sec47sec35sec
WarrantyThree yearsThree years Five years Three years Three years Three years Three years

* = CrystalDiskMark

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