Kingston UV500 960GB SSD Review

Rating: 8.0.

The latest SATA SSD drive family from Kingston is the UV500 series. The drives are available in multiple form factors and all feature full disk encryption, Kingston's first 3D NAND equipped drives to support it. Which is why it sits under the company's Business banner as well as the Consumer one.

The UV500 series is available in three formats; 2.5in, M.2 2280 and mSATA. The 2.5in range consists of 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, 960GB (the drive Kingston kindly supplied for review) and the recently released flagship 1.92TB drive. The M.2 2280 range has the same capacities but tops out at 960GB while the mSATA range ends with the 480GB drive. The 2.5in model range are available as standalone drives or as part of a desktop/notebook upgrade kit.

Powering the drives is a Marvell 88SS1074, four channel controller which looks after 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. The 28nm controller provides the UV500 with AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption as well as support for TCG Opal 2.0. It also uses Marvell’s third generation error-correcting, low-density parity check (LDPC) technology and provides low power support with integrated DEVSLP (Device Sleep).

The official Sequential read/write performance figures for the 960GB drive are up to 520MB/s and 500MB/s respectively. Those read figures are the same across the range as are the write figure with the exception of the 120GB model where the write figure drops to 320MB/s.

Random 4K random read performance for the range is quoted as up to 79,000 IOPS with the 960GB drive rated as up to 45,000 IOPS for random writes. The 120GB gets a write figure of up to 18,000 IOPs, 240GB model up to 25,000 IOPs, 480GB up to 35,000 IOPS and the 1.92TB model is rated as up to 50,000 IOPS.

Endurance for the 960GB drive is quoted as Kingston as 480TB TBW and the drive is backed with a limited five-year warranty.

Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 960GB
NAND Components: 3D TLC NAND
NAND Controller: Marvell 88SS1074
Interface: Serial ATA (SATA) 6Gb/s (SATA III)
Form Factor: 2.5in, 7mm
Dimensions: 100.1 x 69.85 x 7mm
Drive Weight: 41g

Firmware Version: 003056R6

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