100%





Make informed decisions with expert advice. Learn More
If you want the most innovative Mushkin SSD ever, you'll have to be more specific. Mushkin doesn't only focus on launching new and innovative storage and memory solutions, we are always looking for new ways to enhance our existing products as we are doing with our value Mushkin ECO2. Combining the energy efficiency of SSDs with an ECOnomical design, the Mushkin ECO2 Series SSD delivers unprecedented value.
What if? Two simple words. But when combined, the possibilities are endless. "At Mushkin, we've stopped simply asking 'what if the impossible was possible' and started manufacturing it."This though is at the core of every Mushkin innovation. And it's led our engineers to develop everything from industry leading performance gaming memory to some of the most impressive storage technologies on the market. Try our innovations yourself and explore what's possible with Mushkin products.
Mushkin's U.S.A.-designed Mushkin ECO2 allows your ultra-portable or desktop workstation to run all your essential programs at the same time without sacrificing performance due to the slow speed of a standard hard drive.
Not many manufacturers can say they design, assemble and test their products in the U.S.A. but Mushkin has been making its products in the U.S.A. since its inception in 1994. That means, for more than 20 years, we have been uniting all aspects of performance to engineer something you can't get from a spec sheet.
Brand | Mushkin Enhanced |
---|---|
Series | ECO2 |
Model | MKNSSDEC480GB |
Device Type | Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) |
Used For | Consumer |
Form Factor | 2.5" |
---|---|
Capacity | 480GB |
Memory Components | MLC |
Interface | SATA III |
Controller | SF-2200 |
Max Sequential Read | Up to 550 MBps |
---|---|
Max Sequential Write | Up to 485 MBps |
4KB Random Write | Up to 32,000 IOPS |
MTBF | 2,000,000 hours |
Features | Max Read and Write specs are obtained using ATTO 2.46 with a Queue Depth of 10. Optimal Data Flow Optimized for dependable and reliable data flow TRIM Support TRIM Support when used with compatible operating system Shock-Resistant Designed for continued reliable function |
---|
Operating Temperature | 0°C ~ +70°C |
---|---|
Storage Temperature | -40°C ~ +85°C |
Max Shock Resistance | 1500G |
Height | 7.00mm |
---|---|
Width | 69.85mm |
Depth | 100.00mm |
Date First Available | March 05, 2015 |
---|
Pros: Very good value for the price. Though I do think there are better options available. 2 Million MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) is very good. Combined with a 3 year warranty this SSD should provide plenty of piece of mind for the buyer. It's well made is competitive in performance in this price range. Compared to some smaller SSD's I have used and had available for testing this drive is pretty fast. Compared to the 256GB class drive that was in my desktop it's on average about 50% faster and has an access time 1/4 as long, which is very good! Although, for some reason, maximum transfer speeds were lower. This isn't very important however as "max" transfer speeds don't really mean anything in the real world, so just focus on "50% faster", which is the average.
Cons: Slower than some other offerings in the same price range. Random IOPS are lower than I would like, specifically Sandisks offering is superior in this area, as well as sequential performance. Random Input Output operations per Second (IOPS) is an important metric when choosing an SSD. Basically the higher this is the more responsive your computer will be and the better it will be at multi-tasking. Random IOPS is more important that sequential IO, sadly, this drive is not the fastest in either. For very little money you can get the ADATA Premier Pro which will be faster in every way, same warranty just faster and more stable.
Overall Review: Vision Tek 240GB 64kb block size Minimum: 150MB/s Maximum: 420MB/s Average: 237MB/s Access: .204ms Mushkin 480GB 64kb block size Minimum: 271MB/s Maximum: 374MB/s Average: 353MB/s Access: .067ms Mushkin 240GB mSATA 64kb block size Minimum: 105MB/s Maximum: 318MB/s Average: 196MB/s Access: .291ms This isn't a bad drive, and let's be clear, it will blow any mechanical disk completely out of the water. I am happy enough with it I will probably leave it in my computer for a few years. However there are superior alternatives available for the same, or marginally more, money. Sandisk has an offering that comes to mind specifically. For only marginally more money I believe anyone in the market for a good SSD would be better served by the ADATA Premier Pro.
Pros: Great deal for the capacity and fairly fast. 3-year warranty should ease concerns over reliability, as it appears a bad batch of drives made it out of the factory with problems. I have encountered no such difficulties.
Cons: None. Good on Mushkin for owning up to the problems of the first round of drives and honoring warranties. Let it be a reminder to everyone to always back up your data.
Overall Review: The Mushkin Enhanced ECO2 480GB offers a lot of capacity for an SSD while also delivering solid speeds. Read performance benchmarks at 362 MB/s average. Write performance benchmarked at 323 MB/s average. I copied a 1.8 gig video from a Samsung 830 Pro in 9 seconds, that ought to be fast enough for this price range. Benchmarked on an ASRock based desktop PC. I'm trusting this drive for daily use with a new Windows 10 install. Mushkin's SSD stayed quite cool under testing. It it always a good idea to make sure automatic defrag is disabled on SSDs (type dfrgui.exe into the Search bar from the Start menu, from there you can disable the schedule) That will improve the lifespan of the drive as defragging is unnecessary for solid state. This is a great drive to use as a hard drive replacement in any PC. It's spacious and fast enough for all but the most demanding users. I highly recommend it.
Pros: Affordable 480GB capacity drive with good performance for the price. Before we go any further, lets get the benchmark numbers out of the way. I tested the drive using CrystalDiskMark x64, AIDA64, and ATTO. Reads were tested with all three applications, writes were tested with CDM x64 and ATTO. All numbers are in MB/sec across all tests. ***CrystalDiskMark x64*** 100MB 5 Pass Seq Read : 498.0 Seq Write: 340.3 512K Read: 436.4 512K Write: 335.2 4K Read: 28.36 4K Write: 19.94 4KQD32 Read: 224.7 4KQD32 Write: 96.72 1000MB 5 Pass Seq Read : 506.4 Seq Write: 340.2 512K Read: 438.7 512K Write: 336.2 4K Read: 28.50 4K Write: 18.67 4KQD32 Read: 216.2 4KQD32 Write: 89.11 4000MB 5 Pass Seq Read : 498.6 Seq Write: 339.4 512K Read: 435.0 512K Write: 334.5 4K Read: 28.63 4K Write: 16.19 4KQD32 Read: 186.1 4KQD32 Write: 80.29 ***AIDA64 Read Tests*** 256KB Block Size Linear: 438.8 Random: 430.0 Buffered: 363.4 1MB Block Size Linear: 500.0 Random: 495.4 Buffered: 486.9 8MB Block Size Linear: 526.1 Random: 529.4 Buffered: 518.7 ***ATTO Averages*** 256K Read: 430 256K Write: 400 512K Read: 472 512K Write: 427 1MB Read: 510 1MB Write: 451 4MB Read: 526 4MB Write: 466 8MB Read: 536 8MB Write: 475 Average Access Time: 0.17ms As you can see, it' has very respectable performance numbers for it's price point. The drive was also tested against a couple other similar capacity SSD's from other manufacturers in real world usages based on OS load times and responsiveness, as well as video game load times. This Mushkin ECO2 SSD performs as expected, with no noticeable differences with other SSD's in it's capacity and price range. It works great as an OS or games drive. Load times in games like Battlefield 4 and Hardline, as well as Call of Duty Advanced Warfare and others is spot on with it's competition. As far as the drives longevity, I can't say to much about that as of yet since I have only had it up and running for a week. In that weeks time I have put it under a lot of stress with benchmarking and running multiple games on the drive. So far, no slowdowns or hints of any troubles. It's performing wonderfully. If that changes, I will post a followup.
Cons: None with this drive as of yet. Other reviewers say they had problems with drives running slowly or failing, and it seems as though Mushkin has addressed the problem and it no longer exists. They also seemed to have taken good care of their customers who did have issues with that batch of drives, so kudos to Mushkin for doing that.
Overall Review: The drive was tested on following basic hardware under Windows 7 Ultimate 64. AMD FX-8350 @ 4.8GHz ASUS Sabertooth 990FX 16GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical 1866 RAM If you're in the market for an inexpensive high-capacity SSD, then you should be looking at this Mushkin ECO2 drive. It performs quite well, and in the event of an issue, they seem to take good care of their customers. That is a huge plus in this reviewers opinion. While it's better to not have to deal with hardware issues at all, it does happen, and it's nice to know the company will stand behind it's product and do what's needed to correct the problem.
Pros: Fast!!! Makes everything snappier. Boot times reduced Games load faster, Looking at you Battlefield 4. Browser is instant
Cons: Packaging comes in hardened plastic, leaves a lot to be desired. Could be easily damaged.
Overall Review: Installed Win 8.1 in 15 minutes on an HP laptop. Had about 80% battery left after all my apps from ninite installed. So far so good, hopefully it will be my workhorse for years to come. IF your on the fence about SSD then let this be the words that sway you, this will breath life into any device you put it in. This would be compatible with 2.5 enclosures and can work as an external Hard drive for PC, laptops,Macbook . It also can be formatted to work with Xbox One for added storage. However using this as the main hard drive for the OS is ideal.
Pros: My laptop computer is a 13 inch Sony Ultrabook with a 500 GB “hybrid” hard drive. That drive included an SSD component, maybe 20-30 GB. The hybrid drive was a little faster than an old fashioned mechanical drive based on my experience with several completely mechanical hard drives I’ve tested on friends’ laptop computers. So for the price of this drive I figured it would be a substantial performance upgrade for my Windows 8.1 system – and it was. The first job was to clone my old hard drive to this new hard drive. Before I even started the cloning process I created a Windows System image of my old hard drive. It’s good to know that if something screws up you can always go back. I swapped this new hard drive into my Ultrabook and attempted to use the Windows system image just made to the new drive. Windows refused to do this – there was always some kind of error. It might have been because Windows is known to refuse to do a restore to a hard drive smaller than the original. I used Macrium Reflect free online version to clone my old 500 GB hard drive to this new 480 GB SSD. I selected Forensic Clone, and since I was cloning the old drive to a drive 20 GB smaller. I noticed the recovery partition was over 20 GB so I de-selected that portion to be cloned. The process was slow, almost 4 hours, but I popped the newly cloned drive into my Ultrabook and it worked perfectly. Except it ran about twice as fast as before! The most dramatic difference in speed is in starting and waking up. Windows boots from off to desktop in 15 seconds. The Sony Bios takes half of that 15 seconds. Just amazing! Sequential read speed hit the advertised 550 MB/secm, but write speed maxed out at 355 MB/sec, compared to an advertised write speed 485. The only tweaks I made to my system for my new SSD was to turn off the Page file and uncheck Defragment.
Cons: This item includes no mounting hardware, cable, cloning software or instructions of any kind, which is getting to be standard unless you buy a full retail package.
Overall Review: I will never buy or build a computer without an SSD.
Pros: Reasonable read/write speed performance overall, and very strong performance for the price. Durability has not been problematic in my experience. No issues whatsoever with MacOS. This drive offers good performance, decent build quality, a decent warranty, and good value.
Cons: Not the fastest SSD drive on the market.
Overall Review: I work in video postproduction, and SSD's have become an essential too for dealing with high-resolution source footage. This particular drive seem to be a reasonable value-oriented choice for this application. 480gb capacity (or 479.76gb formatted MacOS Extended) offers ample storage space as SSD's go. The build quality of the drive is fully acceptable. It is housed in an all-aluminum enclosure, with steel inserts for the mounting screw threads. Thermal performance is good, I filled it with 460gb of data with the drive in open air (in a "toaster" or dock) and got a surface temperature reading of 107º with ambient air at 68º. This is about up to snuff for my experience with good quality SSD's. The raw speed of this drive is by no means staggering, but it is no slouch, either. Using the Blackmagic Disk Speed test application with a stress setting of 5gb, I achieved sustained write speeds of 203MB/s and read of 227.2 MB/s. That means all good for realtime playback of 2k footage up to 24fps @ 10 Bit 4:2:2. Actual playback attempts of such footage off this drive back this up. 1080p 24fps will run handily at 10 Bit 4:4:4. Realtime playback of 12 bit 4:4:4 is a no-go for any resolution above NTSC D1. To give these figures some context, the same test application gives me 207MB/s read and 260MB/s write off of an identically sized Crucial model. This is slightly better than this Mushkin product, but close enough that price could certainly dictate the winner if you are a value-oriented shopper. A G-Tech G-RAID two-drive RAID 0 array (2x 7200rpm spinning disks) manages to beat those numbers, but only very slightly, at 216MB/s write 222MB/s read. The much higher end, American-made OWC Mercury Extreme SSD that I use as my primary clocks in at nearly twice these figure-- 497 MB/s write 515 MB/s read. But of course, that drive is significantly more than twice the price of the Mushkin product. Using this drive for several weeks as a dedicated After Effects scratch disk, I observed no deterioration in drive performance. This is probably the role this drive will continue to serve in for me. For a consumer seeking a performance-oriented product, regardless of price, this drive is a poor choice. But if value factors into your purchasing decision, this drive could be a very appealing option, especially is you want fast and reliable, don't don't need blazing fast.
Pros: Mushkin's reputation for reliability is very good. Uses last generation tried and true technology. This 120GB capacity is enough for Windows plus a good amount of programs.
Cons: Write speeds are never super fast on a 120GB capacity SSD, but in practice you won't notice it unless you spend all your time running speed tests.
Overall Review: For those who want a low-price SSD from a reputable maker this is a great place to start. If your laptop or desktop computer is an older model this SSD will really speed things up for you. The only thing to check is to make sure your system uses "SATA" type hard drive. Basically, that would be every computer made in the last 10 years. Even the oldest SATA I models will benefit from having an SSD. For those who already have an SSD and it's almost full this would be a good add-on drive for extra capacity and very fast Read speeds.
Pros: *Mushkin 3yr Warranty & Good Reliability *Inexpensive - Ok Performance *Casing is solid yet light weight - for those concerned.
Cons: *Read / Write performance is shockingly low! Having deployed previous Mushkin SSD's I'm surprised at this development.
Overall Review: Performance reminds me of the poor Kingston SSDNow 120GB drives. Though @ 54.99 it's still a good upgrade for an aging machine. It is an SSD after all. Just wish Read Write speeds were higher. Crystal Disk Mark: Seq. 235MB/s Read 136MB/s Write 512k 225MB/s Read 128MB/s Write 4k 20MB/s Read 62MB/s Write AS SSD: Seq. 217MB/s Read 128MB/s Write 4k 14MB/s Read 54MB/s Write Samsung Magician: Seq: 266MB/s Read 426MB/s Write ?? ATTO: 365MB/s Read 295MB/s Write Not sure where Samsung and ATTO got there numbers from but I also copied my Avengers 720p Rip which is 6.8GB to the Mushkin and averaged exactly 136MB/s write speed from my 830 Pro SSD. So, again, this is another inexpensive SSD that I'd recommend for breathing new life into any PC. But if you plan on working with writing large files often you may want to look elsewhere. Otherwise... good SSD for under 60 bucks.