Kingston UV400 480GB TLC SSD Review
Final Thoughts & Conclusions
The Kingston SSDNow UV400 series is aimed at the entry level storage market and we found the 480GB model to have respectable performance. The UV400 480GB SSD performs well until you fill up the SLC cache and then the write performance drops off like on most all TLC drives on the market today. If you aren’t continually writing 8GB or more of data to the drive, this shouldn’t be an issue and it is still a heck of an upgrade when compared to a traditional 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM hard drive.
Kingston has hands down the best SSD Upgrade Bundle Kit around as not many companies offer kits like this anymore. If you are looking to upgrade from a hard drive to an SSD for the first time and want to clone your drive this is certainly the way to go.
| Entry-Level SSD Pricing on June 2nd 2016 | |||
| Drive | 240/250/256GB | 480/500/512GB | 960GB/1TB |
| ADATA Premier SP550 | $57.99 | $108.99 | $207.99 |
| Crucial BX200 | $64.79 | $118.28 | $239.99 |
| Crucial MX200 | $79.99 | $147.98 | $279.99 |
| Kingston UV400 | $68.54 | $116.99 | July 2016 |
| OCZ Trion 100 | $61.62 | $144.90 | $233.95 |
| OCZ Trion 150 | $64.99 | $109.98 | $237.71 |
| Plextor M6V | $82.50 | $151.58 | – |
| Samsung 750 EVO | $83.98 | – | – |
| Samsung 850 EVO | $88.99 | $154.95 | $314.14 |
| Sandisk X400 | $79.99 | $124.99 | $229.99 |
| Sandisk Ultra II | $74.99 | $124.19 | $216.00 |
When it comes to pricing the Kingston UV400 series is priced fairly well with regards to the 240GB and 480GB capacities. We complied the table below to show you current prices on entry-level SSDs. The biggest competition for the Kingston UV400 series that we see is the OCZ Trion 150 as they have similar performance and use the same exact Toshiba TLC NAND Flash. Right now the Trion 150 is priced a little lower, but we will have to see how the UV400 pricing adjusts after it has been on the market for some time.
Our benchmarks show that the Samsung TLC drives are still the best performing TLC drives on the market. The others can’t match the performance, but come in at a lower price to make up for the performance deficiencies. The Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB drive costs roughly 32% more than the Kingston UV400 480GB SSD that we reviewed here today, so for a low-end budget drive where every dollar counts the UV400 might just fit the bill.
Legit Bottom Line: The Kingston UV400 480GB drive appears to be a decent performing TLC NAND drive, but the entry-level SSD market is crowded. You can find lower cost drives that perform about the same or higher performing drives for a bit more money. It might just come down to brand preference at the end of the day.
