OCZ is rebalancing its solid-state lineup with the new launch of the Apex Series. The new 2.5-inch examples slot in between the economy Solid models and the faster Vertex line and are meant to give nearly the full speed of flash-based storage while keeping prices under control. Although based on denser but slower multi-level cell storage, the SATA II-based SSDs use an internal RAID stripe and a new controller to pump read speeds up to 230MB per second and writes up to 160MB per second.

The drives also use more recent techniques to reduce the wear on memory cells and are estimated to have an a meantime of 1.5 million hours between failures; as with most SSDs, the inherently movement-free technology is also skip-proof and saves power versus rotating hard drives.

OCZ doesn't mention prices but is shipping the drives in capacities of 60GB, 120GB and 250GB with equal speed characteristics.