Angelbird's SSD wrk delivers good real-life performance that is on par with current-generation Sandforce drives, but this also means the latest high-end drives from Samsung, Crucial, and Toshiba are faster. The difference is relatively small, though, well below 10% in real life. Angelbird's choice of controller also produces some interesting benchmarking results. While we see amazing numbers in tests like WinRAR, the drive falls behind in all software-installation tests. Then there is our MySQL Enterprise testing where the drive claims the throne in the 16 thread metric, so it could be useful for small- to medium-sized database servers. Overall, I am positively surprised by the performance of the Silicon Motion controller in the Angelbird drive, which I think will quickly establish itself as an alternative to the expensive Sandforce or Marvell controllers.
With a price of $299 for the 512 GB version, the drive is neither cheap nor expensive. While it certainly sits at the lower end of the spectrum with $0.58 per GB, there are drives out there that are faster and cheaper, like the Samsung 840 EVO 500 GB and Crucial M550 512 GB. Both of these come from well-established companies, so I expect Angelbird to run into some difficulties in ramping up sales until they reduce their pricing to below $250, a price point at which the drive would certainly attract the attention of many potential buyers.