The Kingston UV500 120GB SSD should be a contender if you’re looking for the best SSD options. When you’re ready to ditch an old clunky hard drive for an SSD workhorse, this SSD review will show you that consistency is the key to performance. After all, the fastest read write speeds are useless if you aren’t consistent—and this particular Kingston SSD 120GB definitely is
Why We Like It – Kingston SSD 120GB
With the Kingston SSD 120GB, the UV500 in particular, provides durability and consistent performance, a quality that few SSDs achieve.
- Consistent performance
- Highly durable casing
- Brand recognition
- Small storage capacity
- Better choices at this price range
Performance
The Kingston UV500 doesn’t quite perform as well as other SSDs in its bracket, but it’s certainly more consistent than, say, the Silicon Power A55. Its sequential read speeds often peak at its advertised 520MB/s, sometimes exceeding that, but testing shoes it’s more comfortable and consistent around 500 to 510MB/s. Random reads performed up to 79,000 IOPS. For faster random reads, check out the Crucial mx500 2tb review.
Its sequential write speeds also hit its advertised 320MB/s, but is far lower than its contemporaries in the same bracket, like the Samsung 860 EVO 1TB with its 520 write speeds. However, its big brothers—the 240GB version and above—are much faster, in terms of write speeds, at 500MB/s than the 120GB version. Random writes performed up to 18,000 IOPS.
Design
“The Kingston SSD 120GB, specifically the 2.5-inch form factor, has a very appealing design. With a metal chassis and smokey grey coloring, it’s nice to see SATA SSDs that shy away from plastic cases and matte black finish. It gives it highly durable protection.
Along two of the sides there are two threaded holes for mounting, four altogether, as well as four on the “bottom” of the SSD. For smaller form factors, the UV500 has an mSATA version and an M.2 version, provided your laptop or desktop PC can accept M.2 and mSATA drives.
Value
There’s no denying that this Kingston UV500 performs well for its price and has good value. Kingston is easily a recognizable brand. That alone could sell you on its quality, not to mention a five-year warranty sweetens the deal.
With that said, you can get better prices elsewhere, and 120GB isn’t exactly a whole lot of space. For $4 more, you can double storage capacity with the Crucial MX500 SSD, and you get better performance with an equally familiar brand. Comparing prices, you’d be spending about 39 cents per GB for the UV500 120GB, but only 20 cents per GB if you went with the MX500 SSD that holds 250GB, its smallest size. There’s way better choices at this price range of $45 to $50.
Kingston SSD 120GB Wrap Up
The bottom line is this: this particular Kingston SSD 120GB, the UV500, still has better read write performance than most traditional hard drives, and will be an excellent addition to your desktop PC. Even if it doesn’t perform as well as the ADATA SU800, it has far better build quality, consistent performance, and brand recognition than the Silicon Power A55. However, with such a small storage capacity, you might want to consider going bigger. Still, this particular Kingston SSD 120GB has really good value on name alone.
