SSD for newgen Macbook Pro 15. What to buy?

Greetings.

So mod for my MBP finally arrived and i can replace my DVD with SSD.
I figured out i can afford something like 160-180gb atm.
Went to a local online store and prices are frankly a bit confusing.

Kingston SSDNow V+180 180Gb — 308usd
Intel X25-M SATA SSD 160gb — 415usd
OCZ Vertex 2 SATA II 2.5" SSD 180GB — 351usd

Kingston looks tempting for obvious reason (price/capacity) but is there anything else i should be looking at?
or maybe i should look for better price on ebay.

 

Intel is the most reliable. Hands down. OCZ is the fastest, but reliability is very questionable. Don't know about Kingston, may just be a good deal, but generally that much space for that price means something not good.

Ebay, newegg, amazon, check them all before you buy. You will find a good deal eventually

 

Don`t even think about that Vertex 2 drive. Failures all over the place. As for the 2 others i only know the Intel since i am using that 160GB drive in my laptop. It have served me well for 1.5 year. X25-M are a safe and reliable choice. Maybe other people can chime in about that Kingston drive

 

Kingston 1.8" (V+180 series) usually cost a lot more than the equivalent Kingston 2.5" (V+325 series).
To the best of my knowledge, there is no 180GB Kingston, nothing between 128GB and 256GB. If you find a 256GB V+180 for $300, grab it and find a way to make it fit your caddy. If it's a 128GB for $300, you can get faster 128GB drives for less money.

If you'll be running on battery a lot, Kingston V+ and V+100 use a lot less power than the older V and V100 series. If you can get a really good deal on a V+100, probably with a rebate, it can be a good choice for the economy minded user.

 

The Kingston V+100 series use much more power than almost any other drive. This is because they have very aggressive GC (garbage collection).

This does make them ideal for use in RAID0 setups though - either in desktop bound dual-bay notebooks (constantly plugged in) or traditional desktops which have no 'low power' requirement limit.

 

Kingston V+ 100 has very low idle consumption. Other than that it's power consumption isn't problematic.
Vier ssd's van Samsung en Kingston op de pijnbank | Energieverbruik | Core | Tweakers.net Reviews

Do you want to apply the TRIM hack? If so, get the Intel 320 160GB for $289.
http://www.google.com/products/cata...sa=X&ei=y4bDTcaSGs6eOuqlxdAE&ved=0CG8Q8wIwAg#

If not: look at Samsung 470 and Kingston V+100.

 

I am slightly stuck with choice it seems. Everything above 128gb seem to have 70-90usd added to amazon price in our country and ordering from ebay is like 3 weeks (+our post can screw delivery even further).

What would you choose between those? There are like 10 kingstons that look the same but got different price
http://translate.google.com/transla...sc_id=433&sort=&ShowAll=1&chars=128Gb&act=url

 

Kingston V+100 SVP100S2/128G.

Or if you want a little more battery life and a little less performance: Kingston V + Series SNVP325-S2B/128GB

 

Ok ty. But what kind of performance difference are we talking about? Are there are web site with benchmarks i can look at?

 

Differences will be so small it will be hard (impossible) to notice during normal usage without using a stopwatch.

Let's say one boots OS X in 17 seconds, the other in 18. Give or take.

Anandtech has benchmarked the V+ 100 against the V+, but his reviews do not show real world performance differences.
Kingston SSDNow V+100 Review - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

I see. Well, whats up with all that hype around SSDs then?
I mean, i thought that there are some huge differences in speed / stability etc.
Now it turns down that there are just some 3gb/s and 6gb/s (like 5400 vs 7200rpm) and there is not much else that is different -))

 

Marketing, that's the hype. As Phil, it's hardly possible to notice a performance difference between these SSD's without a stopwatch.

I'm using a Samsung 470 since december '10. And yes, there are SSD's which are faster but this SSD has a very low power consumption and the garbage collection works well. I've enable TRIM with the hack and this is my result.



Xbench is a synthetic benchmarktool but it gives you an indication. I agree with Phil, take a Samsung 470 or a Kingston V+100 and you'll be happy with it