OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 120GB Solid State Drive Review

Conclusion

Please note that this conclusion has been modified on launch date after it became apparent that the actual retail price of the Mercury was indeed much lower than our research had shown. We apologize for any confusion.

Admittedly, we and the market in general have come to expect a lot of modern solid state drives. We have seen that most of the time these drives live up to expectations while others simply surpass any preconceptions and prove themselves to be giants among men. There are a few out there however that completely fail on every level possible. It really has been a roller-coaster ride when it comes to SSDs.

In our opinion, OWC’s Mercury Extreme Pro doesn’t quite fit into any of these above-mentioned categories for a number of reasons. It doesn't strike us as an abject failure in any way, shape or form since its performance is in-line with other SandForce-based SSDs yet its price hollers value from the rooftops. Granted, the numbers we received from it were quite good but some companies have taken the SandForce controller with its inherent limitations and have modified things to increase performance. G.Skill is one of these and we will soon be looking at some drives that offer the same. OWC on the other hand stayed the course which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but this makes differentiation a bit hard from a performance perspective.

We also noticed that the Mercury Extreme Pro did loose quite a few blocks to early death. This does concern us to a certain extent since it just doesn’t have the same number of reserve blocks as the 100GB products. With a mere 40 hours of testing seeing the percentage of available bad block allocation sink to 88% which would normally be worrying. To be fair and balanced though, the drive still had plenty of spare blocks ready to go and even with a further 20 hours of testing - 100% write only tests on IOMeter we might add - it stayed at 2048 bad blocks or 88%. So while the initial drop is concerning, we would feel completely comfortable using this particular drive for years if not decades.

While it may not be a top-rung balls to the wall fast SSD with a price to match, the Mercury is still one hell of a fast drive with a killer price. In addition, OWC’s excellent customer service should be mentioned as a shining example of what made their drives so popular on Apple’s platforms. With this support now extending to PC users as well, things could get very interesting indeed if this company can continue offering up high performance solutions at reasonable prices.

We consider the Mercury to be a good drive that doesn't really stand out in any one performance category but makes up for its benchmark numbers with a capacity of 120GB and a great price. All in all, it is worth a look if you are in the market for this type of drive and receives our Dam Good Value Award.


Pros:

- TRIM capable
- Good read & write performance
- Excellent customer service
- 120GB of space
- Good looks
- Simply amazing price


Cons:

- Performance doesn't stand out from other Sandforce drives
- Availability is next to nil here in Canada (you'll have to order from south of the border)