There’s a nice pick-up in reviews again this week, including three full reviews of the retail OCZ Vertex 3 by AnandTech and TweakTown, one of the most powerful SATA SSDs available today. Unfortunately for those looking to read reviews with real world testing, Hardware Canucks is the only one to run such tests, such as Windows start-up, copying files and so on.. The rest just of the reviews resorted to replaying read/write traces or scripted tests that simulate a very busy terminal server.
On the other hand, one useful test we see being conducted by more reviewers is TRIM testing, which is where the reviewer runs a lengthy period of random writing to bring the SSD in an exhausted state to show how its performance deteriorates compared with in a clean state. The testing may also include leaving the SSD idle for several hours to see how much the performance improves and whether it can recover like-new performance again.
The following are the latest SSD reviews published since our last Review Friday:
- OCZ Vertex 3 Retail 240GB @ AnandTech – 6th May – (SATA3) (Script) (Sim) (Trim)
- OCZ Vertex 3 Retail 120GB @ TweakTown – 5th May – (SATA3) (Sim) (Trim)
- OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 120GB @ AnandTech – 5th May – (SATA3) (Script) (Sim) (Trim)
- Micron RealSSD P300 100GB @ Storage Review – 4th May – (SATA3) (Sim)
- Kingston SSDNow V+100 vs. Samsung 470 Series 256 GB @ Hardware Secrets – 3rd May
- OCZ Vertex 3 Retail 240GB @ Hardware Canucks – 2nd May – (SATA3) (Sim) (Real World)
- Intel SSD 320 Series 300Gb @ FunkyKit – 2nd May
- OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB @ The SSD Review – 30th April – (SATA3) (Sim)
Legend:
- Real World – Includes real world tests, such as boot, app launch, file copy, etc. timings.
- Script – Real world tests conducted by script, such as multitasking.
- Trim – Review looks at the SSD’s TRIM performance.
- Sim – Simulated real world tests, such as replay of read/write traces.
- SATA3 – SSD features an SATA 3.0 6Gbps Interface.
If you came across an SSD review over the past week not listed, please let us know!
Please check back next Friday for the next round of reviews. 
