May 9 2011 review by test

The Mercury Extreme Pro 6G from Other World Computing is its answer to the OCZ Vertex 3. Internally it's almost the same as the Vertex 3, the PCB design is somewhat different and the firmware is also a bit different.

After Torture number testing the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G was better than the 120GB Vertex 3. Remember that the OWC drive's 4KB random write performance is capped, so the drive simply doesn't get as fragmented in 20 minutes as the Vertex 3. Neither drive is quite as resilient as the 240GB version. If you are using your SSD primarily for incompressible data (images/videos/music) storage and manipulation then you're probably better off with an Intel SSD 510 or Crucial m4.

OWC's Mercury Extreme Pro 6G is a dead ringer for OCZ's Vertex 3 - at least at the 120GB capacity. The two come with comparable warranties which brings the decision down to pricing, where OCZ currently is a lot cheaper.

From the manufacturer's Site:

Unlike most SSDs on the market today, the Mercury Pro family uses advanced SandForce DuraWrite wear-leveling and block management technologies to keep Read/Write performance at peak while others see performance fall.

Comparison of SSD Data Write Speed Estimated Over Time