OCZ and Kingston offer new SSD’s

OCZ just announced two new Solid State drives: the OCZ Solid 2 series offers drives with 64 and 128 gigabytes of storage capacity. The drives use MLC chips, and are geared towards “mainstream consumers looking to take advantage of flash based storage technology”. The new models use the same Indilinx controller found in OCZ’s more expensive offerings, and are backed by a 3-year warranty.

The performance numbers quoted by OCZ are somewhat lower than the previous Solid series, but the new drives will probably last longer thanks to the use of MLC instead of NAND flash. In addition, the new models include the new garbage collection announced a couple of days ago, which should keep performance levels up once the drives start filling up.

“While solid state drives offer exceptional performance, the high cost of ownership has been a barrier for many consumers,” commented Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Development at the OCZ technology Group. “It has always been our goal to make quality SSD drives affordable to the complete range of customers. By making use of the proven Indilinx controller coupled new flash technology, OCZ is excited to introduce the Solid 2 that delivers increased reliability and performance over competing traditional and solid state solutions at a price point that is truly within reach of mainstream consumers.”

Kingston has also released new drives; theis SSDNow V+ is shipping immediately. Like the Solid 2, the Kingston model is a 2.5 inch part with a SATA interface. Kingston offers more information about the exact performance and pricing of their drives:

I expect pricing for the OCZ drives to be well below the Kingston models; their current Solid series 64 and 128 GB drives are available for $135 and $310 at CompUSA, and the Solid 2 series will probably come in below that price point, since they don’t offer any obvious performance advantages.