Intel’s 520 Series has, since its arrival taken a firm hold in the SSD consumer SSD market and its obvious to see why.

It may have an unobtrusive visual appearance but the 520 Series’ package and performance is everything to shout about. Intel has been generous and thoughtful with the packaging and bundle by going the extra mile and giving an adapters, cable, mounting plate and other items – something you rarely see nowadays.

Getting down to the ‘nitty gritty’ the 520 Series does not shy away from presenting impressive performance results. Right across the board – the benchmark reports were very pleasing indeed. We often see some of the drives dip in performance when faced with Sequential Read/Write tasks but the 520 Series proved itself a worthy contender for the SSD crown.

Intel has moved away from using Marvell as their preferred controller with 520 and opted for the popular Sandforce SF-2281 controller which is used in many popular SSDs and they have utilised their own 25nm NAND flash. The drive we have looked at today is of the biggest capacity Intel supply for the 520 Series and as result is costly compared to the 60/120/240GB models which are just over £1 per GB. The 480GB model reviewed today can be found for just over £600 – something that is likely to only appeal to avid enthusiasts rather than the casual.

Backed with an impressive 5 years warranty, Intel’s 520 Series pushes the boundaries for storage transfer rates and impresses with its sequential read and write stats. If you are looking for one of the best consumer SATA 3 SSDs then this is it.



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