OCZ has unveiled two new families of 1.8″ form-factor SSDs, targetted at ultra-slim laptops and other equipment that uses the 1.8″ form-factor. The two families include the Vertex 2 and the Onyx in a 1.8″ form-factor.
These two families feature the same performance as their 2.5″ equivalents. For the OCZ 1.8″ Vertex 2, it features the SandForce SF-1222 controller, capable of random 4KB writes of up to 50,000 IOPS, with up to 285MB/s and 275MB/s sequential read and write. The OCZ 1.8″ Onyx features an Indilinx controller with read performance of up to 145MB/s.
The OCZ 1.8″ Vertex 2 family will be launched in capacities of 60GB, 120GB and 240GB. These capacities indicate that these also use the newer SandForce firmware which provides additional user capacity over earlier SandForce based drives. The OCZ 1.8″ Onyx will be available in capacities of 32GB and 64GB.
According to the X-bit labs news source, not only is it rare to come across laptops that use the 1.8″ form-factor, laptops that use this form factor are usually high end premium systems which are rarely upgraded over their lifespan. On the other hand, if a consumer can afford such a premium system, then an SSD upgrade would be the cost equivalent of an average user buying a HDD upgrade.
