535 Series 240GB

The Intel 535 SSD was quietly released in April 2015, very few review samples were distributed and the release went largely unnoticed. The 535 sports the same basic specs as its predecessor, the 530. The 20nm NAND in the 530 has been replaced with marginally slower 16nm NAND and both drives use the same five year old SandForce 2281 controller. Comparing performance between 240GB 530 and 535 shows that the two drives share the same performance profile which is severely hampered by a particularly weak incompressible write speed, something the SandForce controller is notorious for. Overall the 240GB 535 scores an effective speed of 71.5% which puts it amongst the slowest handful of new SSDs on the market. There are other drives on the market that use newer technology and represent far value for money. ^{[Aug '15 SSDrivePro]}