When OCZ started their marketing campaign for the Vertex 3, they sent media websites pre-production units with firmware that was stable, but not as fast as the final shipping version. Since we produce articles that directly compare one product to another, we needed to get a retail 240GB Vertex 3 in for testing and use the data to compare the product to other products in the SSD category. As it stands right now, the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB is one of the fastest and most sought out SSDs on the market. We've seen the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G 240GB drive and found its real world performance to be comparable, but the OWC SF-2281 controlled SSD doesn't match the Vertex 3's price or accessory package. OCZ recently launched the new Vertex 3 Max IOPS models (a full review is just days away) with a higher maximum IOPS burst, but that may actually give the 'plain' Vertex 3 a better price point. Let's take another look at the specifications and dig right into the retail package and performance of the Vertex 3 240GB SSD.