Conclusion:

In the end, the performance of the Kingston UV500 960GB 2.5 inch SSD left a positive impression on me. Benchmarking confirms that once again Kingston is a bit conservative with their published read and write speeds, and I wish all drives were marketed that way. While rated for 520MB/s read and 500MB/s write speeds, we achieved reads approaching 530MB/s and writes just over 530MB/s.

The UV500 series of drives is very interesting overall, since you can by them in capacities from 120GB all the way up to 1920GB (yes, nearly 2TB), and they are available in all of the common form factors. I would say 2.5" drives still have their place in plenty of situations, but Kingston is pushing forward by offering this drive in the mSATA form factor as well as the more current standard M.2 form factor. These two allow you to get high capacity, high performance drives in to even the tiniest and most energy efficient small form factor and mobile systems out there.



The 960GB Kinsgton UV500 2.5 inch SSD with upgrade kit currently sells for $297 at Amazon.com and $262 as a bare drive, but this is through third parties only. This drive is more ideally intended to be sold through channels to stock corporate clients directly, and although it will clearly work just fine for a home user it may not be the best choice given the price point. While the upgrade kit is definitely a wise investment if you are trying to replace the boot drive in your current system, in general these two prices are rather high, and part of that is definitely the higher level of security you get with full-disk encryption. Recently the prices of SSDs have plummeted, and many drives with capacities around 1TB have been selling for between $150 and $200, and not $250 and $300. I have seen some Western Digital, SanDisk, and Samsung drives in this range recently and the prices on the recent Prime Day suggestions even lower may soon be normal. That said, if you want a Kingston drive that more directly competes with these other drives in terms of features and performance, check out either the A400 or A1000 series. These two lines still sell for over $200 at 960GB, but they are less expensive than the UV500 series.

In the end, there is plenty to like about the 960GB UV500 2.5" drive, but if I was out shopping for a new SSD with a capacity of around 1TB (and full-disk encryption was not a needed feature) I would be hard pressed to ignore all of the other strong contenders with prices that are lower by anywhere from $50 to $100, or even more.

Pros:

» Solid performance for a 2.5" drive
» Full-disk AES 256-bit hardware encryption
» The SSD Upgrade Kit is a wise choice and worth the extra money over a bare drive
» 5-year warranty with free technical support

Cons:

» High price

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