Intel SSD 730 Series review

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 and Crucial.

Intel claims the 730 is exceptionally fast because it’s equipped with the company’s own third-generation controller with optimised firmware and 20nm NAND flash, both of which have been overclocked. This is an improvement over Intel’s older SSDs, such as the 520 series, which used older SandForce controllers. Intel also claims that the 240GB 730 Series SSD has a lifetime of around five years based on 50GB of writes per day, rising to 70GB per day for the 480GB version. This happens to coincide with Intel’s limited five-year SSD warranty.

Although we can’t test Intel’s longevity claims, we did put the 480GB 730 through our demanding file transfer benchmarks. It wrote large files at a reasonable if unspectacular 546.2MB/s and read them at a respectable 487.4MB/s. Small files performance was 100.4MB/s write and 81.4MB/s read, which was respectable.

Slightly disappointingly, the SSD doesn’t come with a spacer for fitting the 7mm-thick drive in a laptop with a 9.5mm-thick drive bay, such as those in many desktop replacement laptop models. This is something we normally expect to see, but the Intel 730 Series SSD will still fit happily in most normal-sized laptops.

The Intel 730 Series has reasonable performance, but is outclassed by the Best Buy-winning Crucial M550, which is faster and cheaper than Intel’s drive. If you’re looking for the best SSDs then check out our Best SSD 2015 buying guide.