An Update Regarding OCZ's Warranties
by Kristian Vättö on January 31, 2014 3:46 PM EST
There's been some level of uncertainty regarding OCZ and especially the outstanding product warranties. I covered OCZ's situation and its position at Toshiba in our Vertex 460 review but now we've finally got the official word about warranties as well.
In short, all OCZ's latest SSDs will be covered by warranty normally, but the unfortunate news is that all non-SSD products (such as PSUs, DRAM, USB drives etc.) will not be supported at all. Outstanding product warranties were excluded from the acquisition terms, so it appears that Toshiba is only willing to cover the most necessary products, those being OCZ's most popular SSDs. Bear in mind that the acquisition only included OCZ's consumer and enterprise storage divisions -- last time I heard OCZ was looking for a buyer for its other units but it seems that they've not been able to find one.
Update: OCZ told us that they have a buyer for their PSU business with more details to follow in two weeks. The RAM and cooling divisions have been discontinued a long while ago, though.
| Normal Support | Support Until Jan 22, 2015 | Not Supported |
|
Vector 150 Vector Vertex 460 Vertex 450 Vertex 4 Vertex 3 Vertex 2 Vertex RevoDrive RevoDrive 3 RevoDrive 3X2 |
Agility 4 Agility 3 Agility 2 Agility |
ALL Non-SSD Products Core Series Apex Petrol Octane Series Solid Series Colossus Series IBIS Enyo Nocti RevoDrive Hybrid Summit Synapse Onyx Series Solid Series OCZ SATA I SSD (1st gen) OCZ SATA II SSD (1st gen) |
The good news is that the most popular SSDs are covered, including the older members of the Vertex family. The Agility series will be supported for another year, meaning that some warranties of Agility 3 and 4 will be shortened. Unsupported products include the rest of OCZ's SSDs and most of these are models that were never even sampled to media. Ultimately I believe these products were also OCZ's stumbling blocks because although they were cheap, the performance was horrible and failure rates were ridiculously high.
If you have an unsupported product, you may not be out of luck if you happen to live in EU or other region with strict consumer protection laws. Here in Finland the seller is responsible for the warranty by law and OCZ's decision to discontinue support for some products does not change that. Obviously I can't speak for other countries but this is something worth finding out in case your product fails during the original, now discontinued, warranty period.
The full details can be found on OCZ's warranty page.
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Kristian Vättö - Sunday, February 2, 2014 - link
It wasn't up to OCZ, Toshiba made the decisions here. Since they only bought OCZ's SSD divisions, they have absolutely no reason to support OCZ's PSU business. Besides, OCZ has a buyer for its PSU business so it's likely that the new owner will honor outstanding warranties to at least to a certain degree.chizow - Friday, January 31, 2014 - link
That warranty chart summarizes OCZ's SSD woes and subsequent demise quite well. What a mess! Far too many product lines, lack of focus, lots of segmentation for marginal differences in performance, market confusion, and lack of support for existing product lines.Will be a case study somewhere, someday as a strong referendum for a streamlined, focused business model over one that offers too much variety and not enough substance.
Homeles - Friday, January 31, 2014 - link
End the end, it doesn't really matter for me if my warranties are extended or not. I won't be going with OCZ again.While my motivations are somewhat personal, there are also better players in the industry right now. OCZ was nice for offering well performing SSDs for the price, but they don't fill that role anymore. Samsung's EVO line was rather disruptive, and it doesn't appear that there's anything that can compete with it for the price.
While I'm by no means an industry expert, I imagine that we'll see some of the smaller players in the industry get squeezed out. The OCZ brand name is lucky to survive through Toshiba's buyout, but really the industry has lost a key player, and I'm doubtful that this is the end of it.
Homeles - Friday, January 31, 2014 - link
In the end*Kristian Vättö - Saturday, February 1, 2014 - link
Oh, we'll definitely see consolidation and in fact it's been in action for a while already (e.g. Patriot exited the SSD market). It's how markets work: many players enter the market when it's still a niche but the profits are great. The more players, the harder the competition and the lower the profits and in the end only the best companies (which usually have the advantage of scaling like NAND fab owners in this case) stay in the business.SSDs are still a rapidly growing business but I've seen some predictions that the move to 3D NAND will shake the market quite a bit (i.e. many will drop out).
emn13 - Saturday, February 1, 2014 - link
I think this perception (of the samsung evo 840) is false: certainly around here (EU) it is, and has always been, considerably more expensive than the crucial m500 (which, due to power-loss protection, is in any case probably the better buy for a desktop).I really hope samsung doesn't end up dominating the ssd business single-handedly, because that's almost certainly bad for all us (consumers). I get the impression that they somewhat undeservedly get lots of press - which is great for them, of course - based on this not entirely valid idea that they're cheap, and of course because they truly are fast - not that you'll notice the performance difference unless you're doing something quite unusual.
rgreen1983 - Friday, January 31, 2014 - link
What about the enterprise SSDs like Deneva and Talos?DanNeely - Saturday, February 1, 2014 - link
A poster over at Ars Technica reported that he just successfully RMAed 2 Talos drives.http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/toshiba-wil...
ES_Revenge - Saturday, February 1, 2014 - link
I find it a bit odd the way they decided what to warranty and what not to. I mean you would think they would choose products from the last x number of years and not just "all Vertex, Vector and Revo; oh and Agility gets some warranty". I mean I get it from a performance-tier standpoint but realistically most of these drives regardless of being "lower end" were always pretty similar in price with the exception of Revo perhaps. And many unsupported drives are newer than older Vertex and Agility products.I think consumers would be more understanding (and less confused as well) if they just said, "look if you bought the drive in the last two years..." Or all these drives, which were released within the last x # of years..." But instead they decide to honour warranties on Vertex and Vertex 2, the vast majority of which are probably out of original warranty by now anyway. OTOH if you own an Octane or a Petrol you might be screwed.
While personally I have several OCZ SSDs of different generations (all either Vertex or Agility--never any problems *knock on wood*), I wouldn't care if they weren't "honouring the warranty" on my old Vertex and Vertex 2 drives, because they're out of warranty now anyway! However if I had bought an Octane and it was still in its original warranty period, I'd be a bit PO'd.
To say they're honouring [3yr] warranties on products that were current 4-5 years ago, is a bit pointless.
Kristian Vättö - Saturday, February 1, 2014 - link
I think the reason behind the choice is that OCZ/Toshiba is looking to keep the Vertex, Vector and RevoDrive brands in the future, whereas everything else will be buried. I agree that it's kinda odd to support drives that are very likely out of warranty anyway but it looks better to have it listed with future in mind. In the end, brand image is about small things and consistency, listing e.g. Vertex 2 as unsupported drive would have sent a confusing message.