Overall and Final Verdict
Well at the end of the day the OCZ Vector 180 is an interesting drive. Given the performance I have seen with older OCZ drives I went into this with high expectations. Sadly in a lot of the synthetic benchmarks the numbers weren’t what I was expecting. They were far from the worse but specifically in comparison to the S10 based drives I have tested recently our sample fell a little flat. The one area that the Vector 180 really stood out though was in the more real world based PCMark 8 benchmarks. The synthetic benchmarks are nice, but it is great to know that the drive will perform well in things like your games and in Office. So in the end I was left a little torn with the Vector 180 performance. It’s not at the top of the charts like I expected, but it did perform where it was most important.
The rest of the drive did stand out for me though. They stuck with a nice rounded casing that I always like and the new styling looks great. Even better OCZ included a nice 5 year warranty with the Vector 180, I wish more companies would stand behind their drives like this.
The only other issue I had with the Vector 180 came up when I was looking into its MSRP and pricing. The MSRP for the 480GB model tested is currently 259.99 but you can find the drive for about $219.99. That in itself sounds great but some of the S10 based drives are selling for well under $200 right now putting the Vector 180 in a tough spot. Just like the new HyperX drive, the Vector 180 has the styling that people want but it seems to be adding a little more to the price tag than I would prefer. That said you are also getting a copy of cloning software and a better warranty as well. In the end I hope to see the Vector 180 come down a little more but it is still a good drive with good real world performance.