Kingston UV500 240GB (mSATA) Review (Page 1 of 11)

By: Jonathan Kwan
August 24, 2018

How does one become the most famous dentist in the world? Unless you have been living under a rock in the last little while, you have probably watched Greenville dentist Dr. Rich Constantine do the "In My Feelings" challenge, and at the time of writing this review, his video has garnered 84 million views with nearly 400,000 likes on his Facebook page. I have watched his video at least half a dozen times, and even I must admit he has some smooth moves. In comparison, the dentist I go to does not even have a Facebook page, let alone posting a video of himself dancing to the latest Drake hit. Being an internet sensation is one thing, but after reading some reviews on Google -- the legitimate ones written before he became famous -- I am quite convinced Dr. Rich Constantine's real patients think he is a great dentist, too. In this case, I think the road to becoming the most famous dentist in the world involves two things. One is a bit of luck, but the other is being good at what you are doing -- whether it is dancing or doing actual dental work. It is important to get all your bases covered, even if you do not think it will contribute to your success initially. Recently, we have covered the Kingston UV500 240GB (SATA) and Kingston UV500 240GB (M.2) solid state drives. Today, we will cover the Kingston UV500 240GB (mSATA). Even though we have not covered a motherboard with an mSATA slot since the Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK in 2014, Kingston wants to ensure they have all their bases covered. Will this be their key to success? Read on to find out!

Our review units of the Kingston UV500 240GB came in a small brown corrugated cardboard box from the company's American headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, USA. Using the FedEx Ground service, everything arrived in excellent condition to us here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for our review today. Inside the box are three different form factors of the same drive as aforementioned, in which you will see in the next photo.

Like Kingston's memory kits, the company used OEM packaging for their UV500 SSD in mSATA form. I am quite a fan of it, because it cuts down on waste. As per what we have seen in the past, unlike standard clamshell or blister packaging with inserts implemented by many other memory manufacturers, Kingston resorted to using the tried-and-true method of having a PET shell and clear plastic cover. You will not find any fancy window inserts either; everything you need to know about this product is printed on the sticker on the SSD itself. As you can see in our photo above, the UV500 itself is behind the clear plastic cover, so we can get a glimpse of what is inside without opening the package.

Before we move on, let us take a look at the specifications of the Kingston UV500 240GB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:

Interface: SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) – with backwards compatibility to SATA Rev. 2.0 (3Gb/s)
Controller: Marvell 88SS1074 Controller
NAND: 3D TLC
Encryption: Encryption Support (AES 256-bit)
Sequential Read/Write: up to 520/500MB/s
Maximum 4K Read/Write: up to 79,000/25,000 IOPS
Power Consumption: 0.195W Idle / 0.5W Avg / 1.17W (MAX) Read / 2.32 W (MAX) Write
Dimensions: 50.8mm x 29.85mm x 4.85mm
Operating temperature: 0°C~70°C
Storage temperature: -40°C~85°C
Weight: 6.7g
Vibration operating: 2.17G Peak (7–800Hz)
Vibration non-operating: 20G Peak (10–2000Hz)
Life expectancy: 1 million hours MTBF
Warranty/support: Limited 5-year warranty with free technical support
Total Bytes Written (TBW): 100TB

Other than the SSD itself, you will find nothing else included from the factory. This is expected, considering this is a budget drive in OEM packaging. Clipped on a clear plastic tray is the Kingston UV500 with a manual underneath it. This is it -- there is quite literally nothing else from the manufacturer. SSDs are a mainstream commodity in 2018, and this is evidence to the state of things.


Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion