OCZ release Agility SSD series

OCZ have released a new range of Solid State Drives, named the Agility series, which will complement their eight SSD ranges they have at the moment. Described as "an affordable offering for mainstream notebook and desktop users demanding the latest technology" in their press release, the new range will be placed in their mainstream category.

The 2.5" SSD makes use of a 64MB cache, something which the Apex SSD range (which we reviewed a few months ago) does not offer. The drive uses 5 watts of power when in use, and 2 watts when idle, making it potentially appealing to notebook owners. However, the drive is only available in capacities of 30GB, 60GB and 120GB, with the 60GB and 120GB models offering 230MB/s read speeds and 135MB/s write speeds, but the 30GB having lower read speeds of 185MB/s and write speeds of 100MB/s.

Like most of OCZ's SSDs, the Agility series models have a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 1.5 million hours, which is 170 years.

"The new Agility Series of SSDs are the latest addition to the OCZ lineup of solid state drives and are designed for cost-conscious consumers seeking the performance and reliability benefits of SSDs at an aggressive price," said Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management at OCZ. At the time of writing no prices were available for the models.

OCZ have continued to release new ranges of SSDs, now offering "Value", "Mainstream", "Performance" and "Enterprise" branded series. Whilst they offer a large range of drives, it remains to be seen as to whether they can compete with Intel's Solid State Drives, as well as the other competitors on the block that have decided to enter the SSD market, such as Corsair and Kingston, especially after some of the issues they had with the drive controller in OCZ's first SSDs, which resulted in freezes and other performance issues.