Overall and Final Verdict
The Toshiba OCZ VX500 is a bit of a mixed bag. I was a little disappointed with the move to a cheaper sheet metal casing from the machined cases of past OCZ drives. They did however still manage to make the design look good while keeping costs and weight down. This isn’t a drive I would be afraid of showing off in my case. The VX500 shares a lot with the older Toshiba Q300 Pro but the drive doesn't feel dated at all. Performance was impressive on the read side especially with the drive topping our charts in a few benchmarks for SATA based drives. This was especially two in the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark. The write speed did leave a little to be desired, especially when testing at higher queue depths where it fell flat. The sequential numbers did match what was promised though so even people who only look at the specifications shouldn’t be surprised at all. It's getting harder to find MLC-based drives and the VX500 does fit the bill with a short list of other drives. The Toshiba TC358790 controller performed well, even after not seeing any external DRAM on the 512GB model.
As for pricing, the VX500 comes in at $195.99 right now in the 512GB capacity that I tested. This means it isn’t really competing with the value drives but I was surprised to see it not being a little closer with a few other MLC-based drives. That said it does seem to be in line and even below the MLC based Samsung 850 Pro. The TLC Samsung 850 EVO, on the other hand, is cheaper when you find them. So in the end, the VX500 isn’t really a value drive, even when considering the MLC and performance. But it is a good drive for someone looking for fast read speeds and an impressive 5-year warranty on a SATA based drive. I think a lot of the people looking for mid to premium drives are starting to look at M.2 options so the market might be smaller, but it is still there.
Live Pricing: HERE
