top me if you've heard this one before. An SSD maker walks into a fab and orders a round of NAND built on the latest process. The chips are swapped into an existing drive based on a familiar controller, the firmware is tweaked as necessary, and the model number is incremented by an arbitrary margin. With a fresh sticker affixed, a new solid-state drive is born.

Lousy punchline, I know. But the joke is on me, because I have to figure out how to write about OCZ's new Vector 180 without putting you all to sleep.

This is OCZ we're talking about, so maybe that task won't be too difficult. The company's SSDs went through quite a rough patch a few years ago, in part due to their early adoption of SandForce controller technology that was still rough around the edges. OCZ has been rehabilitating its reputation ever since, and it seems to be on the right track since being acquired by Toshiba in late 2013.