Verdict: Tough enough to go into space, but hideously expensive

STEC is the largest supplier of high-end SSDs in the world, and this Olympian feat has obviously inspired the company to name its range of 2.5in SSDs Zeus (Zeus being the king of the Olympian gods).

Thanks to its 2.5in form factor and 44-pin EIDE interface, the Zeus should be compatible with most laptops that have EIDE connections, although you'll need to buy a 44 to 40-pin EIDE adaptor (around £10) if you wish to use it in a desktop PC. The model we tested had an 8GB capacity, but models ranging from 4GB to 64GB are also available. As all the drives use the same SLC NAND flash memory, they'll perform identically to each other.

The Zeus differs from the other 2.5in flash drives in this Labs test in a number of key areas. Firstly, it has a 128KB buffer, which helps to boost its performance. Secondly, it adheres to a number of government specifications, such as MIL-STD-810F, which defines how much wear and tear a product has to be able to withstand in order for the US military to consider buying it. It also has a seven-year warranty. In fact, due to their resilience, Zeus drives are the favoured storage devices for NASA space missions. The Zeus also boasts the extremely cool-sounding Intelligent Destructive Purge, which physically damages the flash memory to prevent unauthorised access - something I bet the IT department at MI5 wishes it had invested in.

Unfortunately, despite its 128KB buffer, the Zeus was no faster than the other 2.5in flash drives in our tests, and lagged behind the Samsung Flash SSD in every test. This was despite the Zeus delivering a quick read STR of 32.8MB/sec and write STR of 40.5MB/sec.

Although the Zeus has a number of very advanced features, apart from its seven-year warranty, none of these will be particularly useful to most people. This means that it's impossible to justify its high price, although I'd definitely buy one if I were building a spaceship.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

• OCZ Core Series 30GB - Hard disks / storage
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB - Hard disks / storage
• Asus EAH4870 TOP - Graphics cards
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro - Sound cards
• Multiwinia - Games
• Zotac GeForce GTX 260² - Graphics cards
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 - Graphics cards