The recent refresh of notebooks by Lenovo and others has given users new storage options by way of an mSATA port. Previously the ThinkPads, for instance, had such a port but it was used for things like wireless cards, never being properly enabled for use with SSDs. Now, along with Lenovo, vendors like Asus and

The OCZ Agility 3 fills the mid-range gap of OCZ’s SSD lineup; but don’t let “mid-range” or “mainstream” fool you. The Agility 3 uses a SATA 6Gb/s interface and the SandForce SF-2281 processor to drive 525MB/s read speeds, 500MB/s writes and 45,000 4KB random write IOPS – those are just a hair under the Vertex

The Torqx 2 is a new line of SSDs from Patriot Memory, which was announced and started shipping at the beginning of the month. Available in 32GB to 256GB capacities, the SATA 3Gb/s drive uses a rarely seen Phison controller to deliver read speeds of 270MB/s and writes of 230MB/s. We put this 2.5-inch drive

OCZ was first to market with an SSD based on the SandForce SF-2281 processor. The Vertex 3 ripped through our benchmarks and easily topped all other SSDs in the market. Just two weeks ago, they let us know about the Vertex 3 Max IOPS, which uses a change in NAND to drive IOPS performance from

Crucial announced their next generation SSDs at Storage Visions in January of this year. The enthusiast class Crucial m4 SSD offers capacities up to 512GB, a speedy SATA 6Gb/s interface, home-grown 25nm Micron NAND and an exclusive Marvell 9174-BLD2 processor. The combination nets 415MB/s read speeds and 260MB/s writes with support for up to 72TBW.

OWC’s Mercury Extreme Pro was one of our favorite SF-1200 SSDs at the time, and remains a solid performer today. But the new wave of SATA 6Gb/s has enthusiasts excited about taking SSD performance to the next level. The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G does just that and more, leveraging the new SandForce SF-2281 processor

At CES in January of this year, Corsair surprised us by announcing a line of SATA 6Gb/s SSDs based on the Marvell 9174 processor. What appeared to be a departure from Corsair’s use of the SandForce line of processors turns out to be a supplemental deal. The Marvell partnership let Corsair get a SATA 6Gb/s SSD

The Intel SSD 320 is the much anticipated follow-up to the Intel X25-M, easily the most popular consumer SSD to date. The SSD 320 (commonly referred to as the X25-M 3rd Generation) is a mainstream SSD, letting the big brother SSD 510 go after the enthusiast space. Mainstream doesn’t mean boring though, the SSD 320

The Plextor PX-M2 series of SSDs marks Plextor’s second effort in the SSD space. And what an effort it is, Plextor has pretty much upgraded every component from the SATA 6Gb/s interface to the Marvel 88SS9174 processor to the 25nm NAND and 128MB DDR3 cache. The PX-M2 is available in 64GB (PX-64M2S), 128GB (PX-128M2S) and