I bet the Intel is faster than its OCZ price equivalent.

I hear that hokey argument all the time, and it's usually from people who don't understand that capacity is just one aspect of data storage, which often takes a backseat to performance. Would you apply that kind of logic to RAM? RAM is very expensive for its low capacity compared to bulk storage like hard drives. You could just have a huge pagefile instead of more RAM.

People already have voted with their wallets. Intel's X25-M drives were in extremely short supply around Christmas, so much so that people were willing to pay big premiums for them. What was supposed to be $230 or so was $350 or more in many shops, and yet people were still buying them up. Even the prices now are reflective of demand, and should be even lower.

Niche market indeed.

You said "having the same chipset, or the same major components, has nothing to do with the quality of the product"

Excuse me ? You obviously haven't spent anytime in Quality & Reliability.

Yes, anything that has any new components can have quality and/or reliability problems.

In fact, even existing products can have quality & reliability problems if there are excursions in manufacturing and defects escape.

But there is a huge difference between a totally new product with all new components and a new variation of an existing product based upon exactly the same components, but fewer of some (flash chips in this case) enclosed in a new housing with a new board.

It's always much better, QA-wise, to use existing technology for new product variations then to start totally from scratch with new components. Isn't that kind of QA 101 ?

its still a massive price for a small capacity and therefore targets a niche market only.
ssd manufacturers are relying on consumers hunger for high speed to counter the lack of capacity but people are voting with their wallets so until you get more gb for your £ then the enterprise will only creep along like a slug rather than balloon upwards.

Having the same chipset, or the same major components, has nothing to do with the quality of the product - only with its feature set. The engineering, management attitude towards the specific product, production personnel and line quality, and certainly QA - have everything to do with product quality. And if the item is new, and there is no field experience yet, you just don't know what you are buying.

The main problem of this field is that when you finally get enough info from the trenches, the line is already obsolete...

How is this news. Intel X25-V were available January 4th? Hello?

@BB:

Totally agree - I upgraded to a Corsair 256GB MLC SSD for a laptop four months ago. By far the best upgrade I've ever made to a computer in the past ten years. It's faster than a greased badger; despite the flaky TRIM support it's holding its speed. And in five years time? People will laugh and point at my paltry hardware.

Intel X25-V SSDSA2MP040G2R5 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167025

what this thing?

It seems the uninformed INQ readers (commenters) are coming out of the woodwork, spreading their disinformation and ignorant rumors like a plague.

Intel's X25-V is just the 40GB variety of its X25-M series and has all the performance and longevity benefits because they use the same chipset.This means you get the same efficient wear leveling technology, write amplification, TRIM support, and other features that make them very attractive as SSDs. The only limiting factor is the 40GB size, but if you need more you can buy the 80GB one for 2x as much.

As for MLC vs. SLC, it's not going to matter. You're not running these in an enterprise environment where you'll be rewriting the entire contents of the drive all the time. With the wear-leveling and write amplification technology, typical usage of 20GB a day or so (of writes!) will last these X25-V drives five years or so--by which time I hope you'll be replacing it with something better. You'd be *stupid* to buy the more expensive SLC SSDs for your desktop.

Agreed. Super cheap will be super crappy. Its like they say...You get what you pay for. Nice try Intel.

SLC MLC. In any case, the super-cheap ones will be the crappier ones.

SLC is crap compared to MLC in these drives, and all the cheap ones are going to be SLC.