OCZ Onyx 32GB review

A small capacity SSD but is 32GB too limited for a single drive?

OCZ Onyx 32GB
It may be speedy, but we cant help but feel 32GB is not enough for a full system of apps and games

TechRadar Verdict

Capacity aside, OCZ's budget drive is well-specified and performs adequately

Pros

  • +

    Affordable

  • +

    Reasonable app performance

Cons

  • -

    Very small

  • -

    Firmware updates wipe data

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When it comes to affordable SSDs, the latest fashion is towards the tiny. In that context, OCZ's new Onyx 32GB drive is as trendy as they come.

But is it so small that you'd have to be a style victim to buy it? Very probably, yes.

Fully formatted, you're left with 29.7GB of storage. That sounds like a reasonable result for a 32GB drive. At least, it does until you observe how much remains after a full install of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. You've left with 15.6GB to play with.

Even as a strictly boot-and-apps drive, that's barely enough to breathe. It's a shame, as by several metrics the Onyx has plenty going for it.

For starters, it's powered by an Indilinx controller. Not the familiar, well-regarded Barefoot, but rather the new Amigos controller designed for smaller, cheaper drives.

Thanks to the Amigos, the Onyx not only supports TRIM, but also cranks out reasonable results in the toughest of our synthetic performance tests – the 4K random read and write benchmarks, where it scores 16MB/s and 6MB/s respectively.

Squeaking ahead

The Onyx doesn't exactly blow the competition away in the realworld performance tests, but it does at least have the edge on its closest competitors, Kingston's 30GB SSDNow V Series and Intel's X25-V.

Ultimately, however, there's no getting away from storage capacity and the Onyx's lack thereof. Use this drive to boot your PC and you'll be constantly running out of space.

So, do yourself a favour and save up for something no smaller than Corsair's £150 Nova V64 64GB.

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Technology and cars. Increasingly the twain shall meet. Which is handy, because Jeremy (Twitter) is addicted to both. Long-time tech journalist, former editor of iCar magazine and incumbent car guru for T3 magazine, Jeremy reckons in-car technology is about to go thermonuclear. No, not exploding cars. That would be silly. And dangerous. But rather an explosive period of unprecedented innovation. Enjoy the ride.