OCZ Onyx 32GB review

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.

Follow TechRadar Reviews on Twitter: http://twitter.com/techradarreview