Klevv Urbane SSD Review

Real-World Software Performance

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

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Lower random read performance bleeds through in our real-world workloads. There isn't a lot of variation between the drives in these charts, but the Urbanes fall to the bottom almost every time. If you're content with just about any modern SSD, then this test will reinforce your reasons for compromising a little. But if you're intent on shaving off milliseconds from the tasks you perform each day, well, it's clear where you want to look. 

Total Storage Bandwidth

Truly, performance over time does matter at the end of your day. This chart shows how a little here and there can add up. Klevv's 480GB Urbane finishes all of the tasks averaging 260 MB/s, which is nearly identical to Zotac's Premium Edition 480GB. The difference between those products is the drives we compare them to.

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

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The performance of an SSD is often dependent on the workloads it was subjected to most recently. Garbage collection, wear-leveling and other background tasks chew through processing power and can slow a drive down. Multi-core SSD controllers are subject to the same limitations as your multi-core host processor when they're asked to do too much. The key is to distribute tasks across cores and leave room for new operations. The Phison S10 comes armed with four cores to tackle background and foreground operations.

We discussed Phison's plans for its S10 in an overview here. In that piece, we detailed several roles for the controller, including optimizations for high-end client and enterprise workloads. What we see above is that the Urbane compares better with other premium SSDs in more difficult (write-intensive) applications. The Urbane is still not in a position to dethrone SanDisk's Extreme Pro in taxing workloads, or Samsung's 850 EVO under moderate use. But the Urbane 480GB does manage to keep pace, and even beat Samsung's 850 Pro in some of the test scenarios. 

Service Time

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We weigh the service time tests more heavily than throughput for general computing tasks. The difference is perceived performance, and that only comes from a responsive system.

Under demanding workloads, the Urbane performs well compared to most other drives. But the emulated SLC buffers some SSDs sport push the Urbane back to the middle of the pack. 

Notebook Battery Life

For more information on how we test notebook battery life, click here.

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The Urbane drives fare well in our notebook battery life test. We talk about wear-leveling and other background activities, and you can see how they come into play in our power analysis. The 240GB Urbane has less space, so it starts cleaning up sooner. It also takes longer since writes take longer. This is why the smaller drive delivers less battery life than the higher-capacity models. The 480GB Urbane falls in the middle of the list with other similarly-sized SSDs.