OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G - solid-state drive - review: OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G - solid-state drive -

The Mercury Extreme Pro 6G solid-state drive (SSD) is similar to the OCZ Vertex 3 in more ways than one. It's fast, supports SATA 3 (6Gbps), comes with advanced features, and also takes a long time to be formatted.

7.2

OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G - solid-state drive -

The Good

The <b>Mercury Extreme Pro 6G</b> solid-state drive supports SATA 6Gbps and offers fast performance. The SSD works in any SATA-based storage application, and its top 480GB capacity version is relatively affordable.

The Bad

The Extreme Pro 6G's performance as a main drive could be better. The drive takes a long time to be formatted, doesn't come with a drive bay converter to work with desktop computers, and its 120GB and 240GB capacities are comparatively expensive.

The Bottom Line

Offering fast SATA 3 performance and compatibility, the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD makes a very good replacement hard drive for any computer, especially one that has built-in support for SATA 6Gbps.

Unlike the Vertex 3, however, the Extreme Pro 6G showed mixed performance in our testing and doesn't come with a drive bay converter to fit well into a desktop computer. At prices of $550 and $295 for the 240GB and 120GB capacities, respectively, the Extreme Pro 6G is also noticeably more expensive than the same capacity models of the Vertex 3. Its 480GB capacity, on the other hand, costs only $1,280, which is significantly less expensive than the same-capacity Vertex 3, which costs around $1,800.

Despite its mixed performance, the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD makes a very fast internal storage device and will definitely improve a computer's performance a great deal when used as the main drive. Even with the expensive prices, it still makes a very good investment. Budget-conscious users, however, should check out the Vertex 3 and the Agility 3 from OCZ for similar performance gains without breaking the bank.

Design and features