Mushkin Pilot 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD Review

Bohs Hansen / 5 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing and Availability

At the time of this review, the 500GB Pilot NVMe SSD from Mushkin can be yours for just £109.94. In the US, it is priced at $127.28.

Final Thoughts

The Mushkin Pilot NVMe SSD definitely didn’t break any records today, but that doesn’t matter. The drive still offers us some good performance figures. Best of all, it does so for very little money. 500GB NVMe storage for about £110 – that’s awesome.

So, the Pilot is a budget-oriented drive which means that we need to think in that direction when it comes to the Pilot. The choice of Silicon Motion controller and NAND seems to have paid off as it does very well in this segment. We see a very steady performance across the tests, fillage scenarios, and drive states. The Pilot doesn’t offer short burst speeds to pimp the stats, instead, it does what it does very well. The write performance is something I especially noticed with the Pilot which does a lot better here than other drives with similar read performance.

Drive Design

Mushkin went for the cleanest design choice, a bare M.2 2280 module. That choice makes the Pilot compatible with most modern systems, whether stationary or mobile. It’s also ready for the newest motherboards which have built-in M.2 heatsinks. Plug it in, format it, and enjoy the joys of NVMe performance.

Pros

Steady performance
Above average write-performance when compared to similar drives
Low asking price
High compatibility

Cons

No record breaking speeds when on a budget

“Mushkin offers you the power of NVMe with an affordable price and calls it the Pilot. The Pilot NVMe drive delivers a very steady performance across the entire field.”