Specifications, Pricing and Availability

Corsair has launched three new extended capacity sizes to go along with their original Force drives. Previously Corsair launched 100 and 200GB sizes, but new you can see that 60GB, 120GB and 240GB have been included.

There is more to the story than just the over provisioning capacity changes. If you look on the chart they now list 50K IOPS 4K with the new extended capacity drives. The original drives also had this feature but it was a work around that involved RC firmware with a low power state bug that Corsair fixed in firmware. Those days are now over and the new Force drives are shipping with SandForce MP2 firmware, MP standing for Mass Production or what you would think would ship on a retail product. The two in MP2 means that the firmware is the second revision of the mass production FW. Everything appears to be on the level for Corsair's retail SSDs but our sample arrived with a high IOPS RC firmware so they maybe a bit of a difference between the retail drive you purchase and our sample. We were told by SandForce at Computex that MP2 didn't have any surprises that would slow performance and so far SF has been honest with us when asked the tough questions.

Aside from the capacity and firmware changes the Force is still the Force. You can drop these things from three stories up and expect them to survive the fall and still work as new, they use less power than platter drives so notebook battery life should increase and the access times are still measured in thousands of a second so all of your software will snap like a cadet at West Point. We have covered the general benefits of SSDs many times so I will not prolong the general chit chat about how good they are when compared to traditional platter drives that are now obsolete for operating system use.

My favorite feature of the new Force F120 is the price. Three months ago we were excited to hear about F100 costing around 430 USD. At CES we were hearing about 100GB SandForce drives costing up to 600 Dollars but now six months later 350 USD is the magic number at Newegg. I think everyone reading this has spent 300 USD on a Western Digital Raptor at some point and had no regrets about the purchase. If that sounds about right to you then spending 350 is not out of the question and when it comes to user experience the Corsair Force F120 is beyond anything a dinosaur could have imagined.

If you are a desktop user and just want to get a taste of the Force then you may opt to spend 199 at Newegg for the 60GB model. The 60GB capacity range is best used in a desktop where other storage media is available for keeping your other files like MP3 and movie data. Notebook users and those looking to keep more data on hyper fast storage can choose the Corsair Force F240 available at Newegg for 645.00. These prices are in line with current pricing from other manufacturers and the F120 that we are reviewing today costs less than the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB at Newegg, both use the high IOPS 4K firmware.

All Corsair Force drives ship with a 2.5 to 3.5" form factor adapter for easy installation in desktop computers and feature a three year warranty.