Fast and Affordable, But Non Leading In Either

And then does OCZ's Arc 100 deliver the dream of fifty-fifty cheaper SSDs? In a word, no... but it does provide more competition for Crucial'southward MX100. At $0.50 per gigabyte for the 240GB and 480GB models, the Arc 100 series isn't setting any new records and the reality is, unless you are prepared to evangelize seriously high SATA SSD performance at previously unheard of prices and then you might also give up on delivering a value SSD.

On average, the Arc 100 240GB was 16% slower than the MX100 512GB in our file copy tests and while OCZ's offer is cheaper and faster than Samsung's Evo series, the latter is also more than than a year former. Of note, nosotros would have preferred to test the 480GB Arc 100 for fairer results simply OCZ didn't have samples. Still, on paper the larger 480GB model can but hope to be about 5% faster, which isn't enough to take hold of the MX100.

As it stands, the only real contest the Arc 100 faces is from the MX100 and every bit far equally we can tell, OCZ has lost the performance battle and is probable going to lose out when it comes to pricing as well. The MX100 256GB can already exist had for $0.45 per gigabyte while the 512GB model for just $0.41 a gig -- almost 20% cheaper than the Arc 100 480GB's MSRP. Hopefully OCZ can afford to be more than aggressive with pricing.

Pros: The Arc 100 is relatively affordable, reasonably fast and ships with one of the simplest software utilities around.

Cons: Compared to Crucial's MX100, it's pricier, slower, has less endurance and lacks some encryption features.