Improvements and upgrades come in many forms. Some are imperceptible. In technology, some are simply vaporware and an excuse to tempt you to make a purchase. Some expect you to spend money to relocate a headphone jack to the bottom of a phone. But, oddly, everyone expects upgrades to be performance related, even though there are many circumstances where it is not warranted or even slightly the goal of the manufacturer. Many items are worthy of a separate product designation or “New & Improved” tag with no perceptible difference in everyday usage. There are always other factors to consider.

Top tier SSD drives come close to fully utilizing the SATA 3 interface to its fullest capacity. This doesn’t mean that SSD manufacturers should stand pat and wait around for interface upgrades. 4k performance needs to be addressed. In many controller/NAND combinations write speeds need to be made faster. But one thing that all combinations can always use more of is endurance. Flash memory does not have unlimited life, there are only so many times each cell can be written to. When OCZ set out to upgrade what is arguably the fastest SSD on the market, this was their goal; make the top performing drive perform at the top for longer. What could possibly be better for the consumer?