Intel has largely been absent from the high-end SSD market for many years, which has been a real head-scratcher, considering the original X-25M's dominance back in 2009. That all changes this month with the release of its all-new 730 series SSD .

Five-year warranty; 70GB write/day; fast enough; Intel reliability

Too expensive; not the fastest; consumes a lot of power

Intel has established a strong record in the solid state storage space, dating all the way back to 2008 with its debut of the excellent X25-M series of drives. Back then, Intel upped the ante in enthusiast-targeted solid state storage, and they want to do it again with the drive we'll be showing you...

Strong Performer; Proven Technology; 5 Year Warranty

Not Available Yet; Enthusiast Class Pricing

Just a couple of months ago we shared some thoughts about what Intel's consumer-class SSDs might be like if the manufacturer had developed its own controllers instead of partnering with SandForce. It didn't take much imagination to see the outcome.

Yesterday, we posted a report that seems to have drawn amazing attention, one that spoke to Intel's final acknowledgement that their 3rd Generation controller was manufactured by none other than LSI. That really isn't that big of a news scoop unless you are an SSD geek.

The new Intel 2,5" consumer SSD is based on the same controller as Intel's enterprise SSDs, the DC S3500 and S3700. We tested the 240 GB model.

got this on sale for under 300 bucks. Incredible bang for buck. Couldn't be happier.

fast; 5 year warranty; it's intel; Price

none

I'm surprised any computers ship without SSDs these days, they are simply that much faster, quieter, and cooler than traditional hard drives. I replaced my laptop hard drive with this SSD. It was a very easy swap procedure. The result is a computer so much faster that it's astonishing.

The Intel 730 Series of SSDs consists of 240GB and 480GB capacities; there's no 1TB version as yet. The 240GB model isn't particularly cheap, costing 62p per GB. The 480GB model is slightly better value at 58p per GB, but this is still distinctly more than rival SSDs from companies such as SanDisk...

Fantastic SSD for the price; I needed a larger SSD but I wanted high-dependency and excellent performance, and this drive delivers both.

Used as a system hard drive with Windows 7. Great speed and reliable. Sturdy structure.