INTRODUCTION

   Solid state drives (SSDs) may be best known for their far superior read and write performance, reduced electrical requirements, lower temperatures and no moving parts compared to regular hard disk drives (HDDs) but they actually introduced something else to the masses which is equally important for some people (if not more), hardware encryption. True it took some time for that specific feature to hit the market (especially the consumer oriented one) but still as we speak there are far more SSD models (both enterprise and consumer models) with that feature than HDD ones (including both 3.5" and 2.5" form factors). Kingston alone has released several 2.5", mSATA and M.2 enterprise-grade SSD models over the years that feature hardware encryption but it wasn't until very recently that they released their very first consumer oriented one which also happens to use their new 3D TLC NAND Flash memory. We are of course talking about the UV500 line and today we'll be taking a look at the 480GB M.2 2280 variant.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   The UV500 line of SSDs is currently available in multiple form factors (2.5"/M.2/mSATA) and in several different capacities (120GB/240GB/480GB/960GB/1.92TB for the 2.5" form factor, 120/240/480/960GB for the M.2 form factor and 120/240/480GB for the mSATA form factor) all of which feature an MTBF (meantime between failures) of 1 million hours and are covered by a 5 year limited warranty. Under the hood of the UV500 series we find Toshiba’s 64-layer 3D TLC NAND Flash (3-bits-per-cell technology) memory paired with 512MB LPDDR3 cache and Marvell's 88SS1074 4-channel NAND flash controller which features SLC cache (pseudo-SLC), partial power loss protection, active garbage collection, redundant array of independent NAND (RAIN), LDPC error correction code (ECC), adaptive thermal protection, data-path protection, multistep data integrity algorithm and fully supports DevSleep (power save), TRIM, SMART, AES 256-bit hardware encryption, TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (fully compatible with Microsoft's eDrive and EU's GDPR). Also according to Kingston the 480GB capacity models of the UV500 series are verified for a TBW (total bytes written) of up to 200TB (100TB for the 120GB capacities, 480TB for the 960GB capacities and 800TB for the 1.92TB capacities). Of course this isn't the first time we've seen a drive use Marvell's 88SS1074 NAND flash SATA controller (Marvell has reportedly sold over 50 million pieces) so let's move forward with today’s review and see what you can expect from the brand new UV500 series.