Mercury Extreme Pro 3G Conclusions

Since this review was written, OWC has released a 400GB model, renamed the line to Extreme Pro RE, and added the Extreme Pro line with 7% over-provisioning for non-RAID usage. Please see the main page for details

Be sure to also read Special Report — Real World SSD Performance.

I’ve never been more impressed with a new storage offering. Never. And it’s even more impressive when you consider the huge write performance loss with most brands of SSDs.

The OWC offering blows away anything from Intel or Crucial as I write this (Feb 2010), setting a new bar for performance, yet it simultaneously offers enterprise-grade features, with outstanding data redundancy and error correction.

The only disappointment is the maximum capacity of 200GB, but that too might change in 2010, and perhaps we’ll see a SATA 6Gb/sec implementation at some point also, which could in theory allow single-drive speed to hit ~500MB/sec.

When you step back and look at the incredible performance, the resistance to performance degradation and the blissful end of idiotic internal fragmentation issues, then add the enterprise-grade reliability and redundancy, this is an entirely new class of product, great for Mac or PC users.

If you’ve been hankering for incredible performance for your laptop or desktop, wait no longer, go get one, then install it.