Final Thoughts
For being our first product from OWC we were very impressed. In ATTO Disk Benchmark the drive scored 559MB/s read and 518MB/s write, which is very close to its advertised speeds and puts it as the second fastest drive that we have tested behind the Kingston HyperX drive. It did beat out the HyperX drive in many of our other tests.
This is a SandForce-based drive so you do get the added features that the SandForce SF-2200 controller offers. The drive will do real-time loss-less compression. This is why there is no need for a cache chip, but also means less writes to the data cells. RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) is a term we have heard a lot with these new drives. So on top of ECC for data protection RAISE adds another level of security. This drive also supports TRIM as almost all solid state drives do these days.
As far as looks go I really like the blue design, the only other drive with a blue casing is Kingston’s HyperX drive. Another thing that you may like about the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G drive that it is assembled in the USA and it has a 5 year warranty as opposed to the 3 year warranty we see with most drives.
The 240GB version of the drive can be purchased from OWC’s website (macsales.com) for $459.99, which puts it at a $20 premium over the HyperX 240GB drive. So if you prefer a drive that is assembled in the USA and has a longer warranty and are willing the pay the $20 then go for the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G drive. Overall ThinkComputers gives the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G Solid State Drive a 10 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!
Pros:
– One of the fastest drives we have tested
– Sleek blue design
– Assembled in the USA
– 5 year warranty
Cons:
– None that I found
