OCZ Agility EX Series SATA II 2.5" SSD

In December we looked into OCZ's popular Vertex the next logical step was to investigate their budget entry SSD the Agility which is aimed more at the notebook and entry level workstation.   Pricing in the last few months most certainly has dropped with all these products so could it be time now to start looking into these types of drives as a primary boot drive.  Looking around it would seem to be so as Intel's latest release and we are seeing some more of the major spindle drive players coming into the market.   However costs in these according to some analysts that SSD pricing is still steep, therefore we need to find a common ground pricing point which brings with it the performance that makes the product viable in the initial purchase of the system build.   Enter OCZ and Intel who sit on common ground in this area producing these very cost effect boot disc SSD's.  Applications do launch much faster and programmes read much smoother and quicker therefore productivity is in turn advanced. 

Though for those individuals who are looking at building a cost effective high-end solution then todays article just might be "the requirements of the many with the need for speed".

Therefore we see from the OCZ PR release below, 3 differing capacities of SSD's from the Agility Range.

Offering your system the incredible performance of flash-based storage, the OCZ Agility Series delivers the performance and reliability of SSDs at a lower price per gigabyte than other high speed offerings currently on the market. The OCZ Agility Series is the result of all the latest breakthroughs in SSD technology, including new architecture and controller design, blazing read/write speeds, and 64MB of onboard cache.

Perfect for notebooks and desktops alike, the Agility Series is ideal for energy-efficient mobile computing to extend battery life, increase the speed of access time, and provide a durable alternative to conventional hard disc drives with superior shock resistance. High capacities and low power consuming NAND flash technology provide the necessary performance and battery life boosts generated by the proliferation of mobile gaming and new ultra-thin laptops.

The OCZ Agility drives feature a durable yet lightweight alloy housing, and because OCZ SSD's have no moving parts, the drives are more rugged than traditional hard drives. Designed for ultimate reliability, Agility Series SSD's have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) ensuring peace of mind over the long term. All Agility Series SSD drives come backed a three year warranty and OCZ’s legendary service and support.

With these marketing words of wisdom complete we move onwards to a few pictures of the drive, though some pictures of this drive have been around for some time now.

Page 1 - Introduction
Page 2 - Agility Pictures
Page 3 - System Set-Up and Software Used
Page 4 - SiSoftware Sandra 2010
Page 5 - Everest Ultimate Ver. 5.03
Page 6 - Miscellaneous Hard Disc Benchmarks
Page 7 - Professional Benchmarks
Page 8 - Conclusions and Award