Mainstream SSD Shootout: Crucial v4 vs. OCZ Agility 4 256GB

I never thought of weak performance as being a pro. LOL

Editor note: Fixed .

One of the graphs (AS SSD Benchmark Access Time) is nearly useless because of the huge difference between the best and worst score. It would have been better to present it with a logarithmic scale, cut of the Hitachi at the double of the second worst, or delete it altogether.

You didn't include results for the SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB which has great speeds and is selling in between $165-$180 as I write this.

Sorry I don't see how this is nearly useless at all, you just need to be able to read as the figures are all there. I do not see why we would remove some drives in some tests rather than just include all drives in all tests.

The SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB is just another SandForce SF-2281 drive and we already included the Intel SSD 510 Series and Kingston HyperX. Also we base most of our prices off what can be found at Newegg.com and right now the SanDisk Extreme SSD 240GB is retailing for $215.

Long story short...the Crucial drive is an Edsel according to the review. Then again the Agility was also surprisingly low in performance compared to the Vertex 4, also from OCZ. Considering that the prices are similar I would have expected somewhat similar performance within the same brand. If I do pick something up soon for an upgrade it won't end up being either of these it appears.

There is almost every week a sale in the Agility 4 256GB. Last week newegg had it on sale for $159.90 after a $20 mail in rebate.

With OCZ 256GB Vertex 4 at $200, I'm not sure why I would even look at the other two.

OCZ has never been reliable for me..I've had Vertex 1 and 2....we then got a crucial and it seems very reliable and just as fast in real world use.. Will never use an OCZ due to it's unreliability. Look on newegg and amazon at the reviews and the slightly better performance is not worth the $$ or hassle. OCZ Is the worse in my book.

Regardless of performance, I'll never use an OCZ drive again.. three (OCZ) drive failures over the span of a few weeks left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.

8 out of every 10 OCZ SSD will fail within 2 months. The other 2 will last 65 days.

The v4 just suffers because of its 3gb/s interface. it is made for budget buyers who want an ssd for the hdd price

The Samsung 830 has Samsung's own custom controller for that price at the same capacity. Go figure.

I wonder if they were using the latest firmware on the Agility 4 SSD. OCZ has been going a really good job releasing new firmwares that squeeze out more performance on the drives.

Beyond the comparison of these two, this is reassuring that the Vertex 4 is the SSD to get, atm.

I love my Agility 3 drives and I don't care what bad things people say about OCZ. Their customer service, RAM and SSDs have been top notch for me so far.

Glad to see the prices dropping, wonder why they are dropping though... with HDDs becoming more expensive due to floods and SSDs becoming popular, the demand growth should be faster than the supply growth. What am I missing?

No its nearly the same price as its big brother (the M4) and the performance is shedloads lower. It doesn't max out Sata 3GB so you can't say thats why it suffers. It suffers because its made of cheap parts that don't add up to a good value product. Strange move from Crucial.

I'm glad to see not everyones statement holds true. How can anyone make a statement saying OCZ drives have a 100% failure rate?

My Agility 2 has been an excellent SSD.
Has the gaming, multi-tasking and OS boot time speed of a Vertex 2, with no problems and great support from OCZ.
Been 14 months, not a single issue.
Anyone complaining about thier reliability are usually people with no leg to stand on or any evidence to support thier claim and choose to ***** because thier upset thier more expensive SSD is getting smoked; and they paid more per GB. Most sandforce issues were PEBKAC.

so you're saying all the 1000+ reviews out there on amazon and newegg are all people who have no leg to stand on and don't know what they're doing and like to bag on OCZ for producing a great product? I am sorry, I see where you're coming from, but this just doesn't make sense. in cases where you have some people complaining about a product and its failure rate that bring down the overall rating of a product, which I can understand. but when you have an overall majority of people having the same issue of failure and complaining about the product, which defines the overall low rating of a product, that's a different story. if I see I product on Newegg or Amazon that has 4 stars, while some bag about its shortcomings, I can easily overlook the few bad review and knowing that the overall majority of the product "should" be good. but when I see a 2 star overall rating on a product where majority of the customers complain about the same issue, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the majority of the product has a problems.

I think you're one of the few who happen to have a perfect product that actually works the way it should, and you lucked out on that. but that doesn't mean the majority out there are WRONG.

Which would also bring into question how many consumers haven't reported whether being positive or negative. For personal reasons(I'm not the card bearer), I've not been able to rate the products I have received. I'm willing to bet that people with negative experiences are more likely to report back.