Kingston SSD UV500 240 GB Review and Test

The UV series is the entry-level entry into Kingston’s wide range of SSDs. Its main purpose is to provide an opportunity for a budget transition to the world of SSD for that category of PC users who, for one reason or another, have not yet begun to take full advantage of solid state storage systems. The updated version of the UV500 retained the basic speed characteristics familiar to us from the SSDNow UV400 review, but received a greater variability in free space and several case form factors at once.

To be more precise, UV500 drives can be purchased in volumes from 120 to 1920 gigabytes, and as a form factor, choose between classic 2.5″, mSATA or M.2 2280 (SATA 6 Gb / s connection interface). The retail price range, at the time of writing, starts at $38 for the base model and goes up to over $500 for the aforementioned 2TB version. Thus, UV500 representatives can be considered as a relatively inexpensive replacement for a regular hard drive, including those HDDs that are paired with high-speed small-capacity SSDs and are used mainly for storing consumer media content or installing games.

An additional pleasant moment was that despite all the budget, Kingston supplied the new items, albeit limited, but a 5-year warranty. It is also worth noting that since the second quarter of 2017, all Kingston and HyperX SSDs intended for the domestic market and officially imported into Ukraine are marked with a special holographic sticker with a serial number on the package. Only such drives can qualify for warranty service in our country. SSD drives purchased at foreign trading floors or stores in Ukraine are not subject to warranty replacement, but are subject to warranty replacement from the seller or through one of the company’s RMA hubs in the UK, USA or Taiwan. In this case, the buyer pays for the shipping of the warranty drive.

Kingston SSD UV500 240GB (SUV500/240G)

The SUV500/240G model with a capacity of 240 gigabytes and a 2.5-inch case form factor was given to us for testing.

The SSD is made from a dark gray metal alloy. The exact dimensions of the case are 100.1×69.85×7 mm. An adapter that increases the height of the structure up to 9 mm is not included in the scope of delivery. To protect the contents from tampering, one of the screws has a warranty seal.

Inside the case there is a shortened printed circuit board without additional cooling elements.

The specified volume of 240 gigabytes is recruited by four 3D TLC NAND standard memory chips, produced according to the 15-nm process technology. Since Kingston is one of the few companies that has its own wafer cutting and chip packaging facilities, the microcircuits received their own marking – FH64B08UCT1-31. Usually Toshiba is the supplier of the plates for Kingston, but in this case, the exact information about the origin of the memory was hidden from all diagnostic utilities. Perhaps this is due to the fact that since recently Kingston has also begun to actively cooperate with Micron Technology Corporation and the memory used in the UV500 may well differ from batch to batch.

The four-channel Marvell 88SS1074-BSW2 microprocessor, well known to us from the previous UV400 series, is used as a controller. Based on the combination of its technical characteristics and positioning as a budget model, the hero of today’s review will not claim any performance records. The maximum random write speed of 25,000 IOPS is very modest by today’s standards. The main advantage of this class of solid state drives lies solely in the low response time compared to standard HDD solutions.