Not so long ago we had to worry about controllers because driver support was still evolving, SATA port II and III interfaces, some chip series were bigger/usedmorepwoer/ranhotter, and there was a heck of a lot of imagined things that could go wrong.. We also had to consider how many firmware fixes certain companies took to get it right.. so validation became key.
Today for the most part they all are fast enough to dicking around with drivers to gain an advantage is for teckies, they're al 19 and 22nm so they use little power and run very cool, and most manufacturers have learned their lesson about validation.
Basically manufacturers were all scrambling to get their product to market before the other guy and gain that initial marketshare, while picking and choosing chips, controllers, writing their first firmware versions, and basically getting their feet wet.
Today.. look for things like power draw, they'll all use very little .5-3watts, they'll all be pretty fast with some stand outs, validation issues are mostly in the past, everyone is using SATAIII, drivers are refined.. it's all good. Something to consider would be how much data you read and write per day verses life expectancy.. you might need an enterprise drive depending on your math. Doubt it, but if you do tons of video most every day or run a server with them.. then pay attention to this part.
Controllers, chip series, firmware.. will point towards a certain drive being ideal for a certain type of work. In our world of still photography we're good with just about anything. I've had more SSD's in/out of my hands while building machines than I care to remember with the important point I'm still waiting for my first defective one. I've owned maybe 12 or so. I have one in every laptop, two in my old workstation, and maybe 3 in my new Hack. As of last week the Samsung 840 pro for system drives were my favorite with the Samsung Evo for larger data drives. I've had 4 Samsung 840 Pro's, the longest for 7-8 months, absolutely reliable and the best toolkit (used to update firmware without dataloss, secure erase, reset, etc).
Today.. this very day I'd be looking at the OCZ Vertex.. newest tech, perhaps faster than the 840 pro, 7mm thin, 5 year warranty.. I'd look at this for system drives. If I wrote a ton of data or ran a server the OCZ 150, same fast speeds, 5 year warranty, 50g a day durable, but about 2.5 times the price of the Vertex. On the other hand the Samsung 840 Pro 256gb version is about $75 less than the new Vertex, already proven reliable on it's second firmware update.. and that great tool kit. Or a Samsung Evo if I needed a tb of SSD storage at an affordable price.. We live in good times!
