Final Thoughts
Given that the OCZ Vector 150 and Vertex 460 are both based on the Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller and paired with Toshiba's 19nm MLC NAND, we are surprised that the RevoDrive 350 reverts to the LSI SandForce 2282 – a controller used back in 2011 by the discontinued Vertex 3. We expected the Barefoot 3 to take center stage but this isn't the case.
Nonetheless, with the right flash memory the SandForce 2282 is good for sequential read and write transfers of up to 500MB/s (@ 128KB blocks), so four of them working together were never going to be slow. The RevoDrive 350 provided the best results we've seen in our file copy test, being an average of 120% faster than the Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB.
Furthermore, we were relieved to find that the RevoDrive 350 is much faster than the RevoDrive 3 X2 in both our file copy and application tests and it's set at a fairer price too, though that doesn't mean it's cheap at $1.73 per gigabyte. By comparison, the Samsung SSD 840 Pro costs $0.96 per gigabyte for the 128GB model and just 82c per gig for the 512GB unit.
You could buy four 128GB Samsung SSD 840 Pro drives for $496, 40% less than the RevoDrive 350, and we are willing to bet the Samsung drives are faster in RAID0 as well. Nevertheless, the RevoDrive 350 is a neat little package that has the advantage of being quick and easy to install into a PCIe slot instead of dealing with four separate drives and SATA 6Gb/s ports.
Among PCIe SSDs, the RevoDrive 350 may be the most attractive. The Asus RAIDR only comes in a 240GB model and costs $350 – 33% cheaper than the 240GB RevoDrive 350 but 54% slower on paper. Similarly, the OWC Mercury Accelsior 480GB is $690, 17% cheaper yet around 55% slower, and the Mushkin Scorpion costs 10% less at $750 but is also around 50% slower.
As we've said before when reviewing OCZ's PCIe SSDs, there are a few disadvantages worth considering – besides the price of the drive. Perhaps the biggest thing you need to keep in mind is that you are placing all your eggs in one basket. If a single memory chip or controller fails inside the RevoDrive 350, the drive will become unusable and your data will be lost.
Lastly, we can't say much on reliability because our sample has only been in action for two days but we plan to give it a workout going forward. OCZ says the RevoDrive 350 can handle 50GB of writes per day for three years – quite a lot – plus the drive comes with a three-year warranty so as long as you keep your data backed up a failure shouldn't be devastating.
score
Pros: OCZ's RevoDrive 350 is a decent value next to rivals by Asus, Mushkin and others, it's easier than dealing with separate SSDs, and it's crazy fast by modern standards.
Cons: It's pricey. Not outrageous compared to 2011's RevoDrive 3 X2 and not exactly a bad value, but at $530 the 240GB model costs almost as much as our entire budget box.