Toshiba’s OCZ VX500 series SSDs pave affordable upgrade path to 1TB
Throwing shade at TLC-based SSDs.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Toshiba has a new mainstream 2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps solid state drive line under its acquired OCZ arm, the VX500 series, intended for users looking to finally ditch their comparatively pokey hard drive as the primary storage option.
Though these are affordable SSDs, you won't find any triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory underneath the hood. Toshiba makes crystal clear that these drives use its own multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash, noting that penny-pinching users don't need to sacrifice endurance for a lower cost SSD.
"Delivering over 3X the endurance of TLC-based SSDs, the Toshiba OCZ VX500 SSD series ensures users who need increased product longevity aren’t neglected in the wake of a value-oriented market," said Alex Mei, VP of Marketing and GM of Etail/Retail SSDs at Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. "The VX500 series was designed for today’s DIYers looking to upgrade from traditional hard drives with a solid state solution that thrives in the wide spectrum of mainstream oriented mixed workload applications."
We haven't had the opportunity to test these new SSDs yet, but going by Toshiba's specs, they offer sequential read and write performance of up to 550MB/s and 515MB/s, respectively.
Here's how rated performance breaks down by capacity in order of sequential read, sequential write, random read, and random write:, followed by price (MSRP)
- 128GB: 550MB/s, 485MB/s, 62K IOPS, 49K IOPS - $63.99 (~$0.50 per gigabyte)
- 256GB: 550MB/s, 510MB/s, 90K IOPS, 58K IOPS - $92.79 (~$0.36 per gigabyte)
- 512GB: 550MB/s, 515MB/s, 92K IOPS, 64K IOPS - $152.52 (~$0.30 per gigabyte)
- 1TB: 550MB/s, 515MB/s, 92K IOPS, 65K IOPS - $337.06 (~$0.33 per gigabyte)
Toshiba says these drives thrive in mixed workload scenarios, so there shouldn't be a big drop off in performance if you're moving big or small files. It also touts endurance ratings of 74TB (128GB model), 148TB (256GB model), 296TB (512GB model), and 592TB (1TB model).
The drives are backed by a 5-year warranty and come bundled with Acronis True Image cloning software.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).


