Can someone help me understand this ridiculous SSD price hierarchy?

[Sankersizzle]

Hey everyone. I'm finally going to get an SSD very, very soon, but I'm pretty confused as to how they're priced. I'm buying them from Canada Computers, because I hate ordering things online and waiting for them, plus it needs to be here before I leave for school on Monday.

Anyways, I'm looking to keep things cheap at the $300-$370 price range (I recently had more money to throw away, but I spent my computer money on a supercharger for my truck ). I'm looking to you guys for guidance. Obviously there is a reason for the pricing, and the devil is in the details of the SSD. However, I don't know/can't understand the details, so the devil just sits there and laughs at me.

To the point: It appears SSD's that are the same, are priced differently under Canada Computers (and also NewEgg) pricing schemes. For example, I was looking at this 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 for $319 intially, but then I saw this 100 GB OCZ Vertex 2 for $369. Obviously, the Vertex 2 is 20GB bigger than the Agility 2, but the Agility 2 is somehow $50 more, depsite them appearing to be the same to me. Therefore the Agility 2 must be better? But how? Obviously it's a pretty big difference I'm missing. They have the same read/write, don't they?

Adding to the confusion is the plethora of similarly priced SSD drives. For example, this 120GB Mushkin Callisto is $329, which is $10 bucks more than the Vertex 2 but it's exactly the same.... is it just a branding thing? Also this 128GB ADATA SSD for $299 has very similar specs to the Vertex 2, but it's bigger and $20 less.... what?

See, I know there must be a reason. A reason that you guys can understand, but I can't. Please, share with me your wealth of knowledge and help a brother out. This is the page I'm getting all my SSD prices/ideas from. There's a whole bunch more offerings that appear the same there. Can someone just recommend to me which one to buy? It doesn't have to be one of the ones I was eyeing. haha. Thanks in advance!

PS. I have a bone stock i5 17" MBP.

 

[Hellhammer]

Just get the OCZ Vertex 2 120GB. All drives you listed seem to use the same controller but at least Vertex 2 works well with Macs and is quite popular. The AData drive isn't bigger, they just list the whole capacity while OCZ has reduced 8GB which is likely used for over-provision. AData likely uses the same amount for over-provision, they just don't say it

 

[Sankersizzle]

If they have the same controller and what not, why is the Agility a blatantly worse deal then? I read online that Vertex 2 reads something at 40K and Agility 2 at 10K. I don't know exactly what that means, but something should read something at a higher number right, and is therefore better if it does(that sentence made my brain hurt)?

Is more expensive not better in this case? Can someone explain?

 

[MacHamster68]

its branding that is causing the differences
and there are still people who go by looks "ah this one with the black plastic casing and the golden stripes looks cool oh but this one with the silver golden flash on it looks far better i get that " and the manufacturers know that very well ,so in some cases they just change the outer shell to something more flashy and leave the same inside but rise the price or make it less flashy and drop the price , and there are the people who think its more expensive so its better despite the same internals
ok there are some ssd's outside which are a little bit faster in read write speeds
the difference might only be nanoseconds , but the manufacturers use that little tiny fact to put a higher price on , in real life you as the customer wont even notice that tiny difference

 

[Sankersizzle]

Ah, alright. Damn Corporations. Thanks guys.

So the Vertex 2 is the way to go? It has 4kb writes of 50,000 IOPS, whatever that is. The Agility 2, only 10,000. I hear this is better for the real world usage factor. Bigger is better, right?

Also I always see a mad debate between people when battery life comes into play. Does having an SSD actually increase a battery life?