I’ve recently bought myself a new Intel 60Gb SSD to increase the speed and performance of my latest pc build which can be found in the “WIFI” tab at the top of the page. I’ll be discussing what I thought of the purchase and the speed improvements i’ve gained through purchasing this product along with any features I didn’t particularly like or hated.
First up is the unboxing of the product, the SSD came in a fairly simple conservative brown box with the product details on the top and a soft grey foam mesh interior which appears to provide minimum support for the product. It contained the SSD inside a static proof bag which shielded it from any minor buildups of electricity when opening it.
Upon inspection of the product, the SSD is only 7mm in height compared to the typical height of an SSD which is 9.5mm, although it comes with an attached black rim around the top filling out the extra space to fit in a traditional 2.5″ drive bay. This rim can be removed by four screws on the top if you purchased the SSD to fit inside a more restricted space such as a laptop. When I attempted this however, the screws were too long without the additional rim and protruded from the top of the SSD in an ugly fashion. There weren’t any other smaller profile screws included in the product box either which was strange and I wondered if I had misplaced them during opening the product, which is strange as i’m scrupulous with keeping small parts together and in sequence so I remember where they came from, especially when taking apart electronics.
Upon further inspection of the unit, the top of the SSD had a nicely brushed aluminium texture to it which I quite liked and it looked well machined. However upon turning it over I found the base had a very cheaply machined or sand-blasted appearance to it which also extended up the sides to the top. At first I thought I had just got a dud product because it literally looked like it had been dragged along the cement for a good 100 metres or so, but after a decent amount of searching the web it appears that this design was intentional. I was very disappointed after seeing this as I typically buy Intel because of their visually appealing and well designed products and I’ve personally never had a problem with them.
This was quite a letdown and i’m now fairly skeptical about buying another SSD from them again, and their defence for shipping a product in this quality is: “It’s what’s inside that counts”, which seems strangely similar to their chipset trademark “Intel Inside”.
The chips inside look as they typically would from any SSD vendor, and nothing much to report on them except they look fairly secure between the case with a small amount of spongey material preventing them from moving when the case is screwed down. Getting to the chip is also very easy, I accidentally opened the case while trying to remove the black rim from the top which uses the same screws.
The SSD works flawlessly as a boot drive in my new windows 7 pc with no hassles setting it up at all, I didn’t even have any troubles using the software or securely erasing the drive thanks to intel’s downloadable programs. The only downside I can see to this product is the size to price ratio, this 60Gb SSD has enough to hold my windows 7 operating system and little extra in the way of programs. Thus I had to use a 1Tb mechanical drive to store any extra programs/games I wanted, luckily I have enough storage on that to last forever. Finally if intel fixed the horrifying look of the bottom of the case i’m sure many more people will purchase this great product.
Conclusion
Here’s the final product score out of 100%:
The higher the score the better.
Price: 75%
Durability: 85%
Size/Weight: 90% (Higher is more compact and lighter)
Features: 85%
Aesthetics: 65%
Usefulness: 90%
Total: 81.6%
Legend
0% – 25% = Terrible Item, The item will break shortly after purchase and will leave you with a paperweight only left for discarding.
26% – 50% = Meh Item, A very poor item that you would use and forget about after a few months of use, or may break quickly and degrade over that time.
51% – 75% = Good Item, This item would satisfy your needs for a long time but isn’t the best quality around and may need replacing or become outdated after a year or so.
76% – 90% = Fantastic Item, An item that you need but may either cost lots or wear out over time and may eventually need replacing after 2 or so years.
91% – 100% = Amazing Item, An extremely durable item that will suit all your needs for the device and more, as well as lasting many many years.
