Toshiba os launching the OCZ VX500 SATA solid state drive (SSD) series, a mid-range SSD designed to replace the aging OCZ Vector 180. The OCZ VX500 abandons the Barefoot 3 controller and uses instead a Toshiba controller. Toshiba's TC358790 controller has been used in several products, including the Q Series Pro client SSDs and the HG6 enterprise/OEM SSD.

The OCZ VX500 makes use of SLC write caching. SLC caching on MLC SSDs allows for the highest peak performance, but at the cost of creating more work that needs to be done later to flush the cache.

Endurance ratings for the SSD is 74 to 592 terabytes written (TBW), making it suitable for write-intensive applications.

The series delivers sequential read/write speeds of up to 550 MB/s and 515 MB/s, and random read/write performance of up to 92,000 and 65,000 4KiB input/output operations per second (IOPS).

Capacity	128GB	256GB	512GB	1024GB
Controller	Toshiba TC358790
NAND	Toshiba 15nm MLC
External DRAM	None			256MB
Sequential Read	550MB/s	550MB/s	550MB/s	550MB/s
Sequential Write	485MB/s	510MB/s	515MB/s	515MB/s
4KB Random Read	62k IOPS	90k IOPS	92k IOPS	92k IOPS
4KB Random Write	49k IOPS	58k IOPS	64k IOPS	65k IOPS
Idle Power	125 mW			260 mW
Max Power	3.4 W
DEVSLP Power	5 mW			unsupported
Encryption	No
Endurance (TBW)	74 TB	148 TB	296 TB	592 TB
Warranty	Five years
MSRP	$63.99	$92.79	$152.52	$337.06

The OCZ VX500 SATA SSD series is available in four different capacities ranging from 128GB to 1024GB8 and will be backed by a 5-year Advanced Warranty Program. Additionally, each VX500 SSD comes bundled with Acronis TrueImage 10 cloning software.

The initial MSRPs Toshiba has set for the VX500 position it below the Vector 180 and just below the Samsung 850 EVO.