The introduction of the SM2280S3 M.2 SSD last June marked Kingston Technology's first entry to the M.2 SSD arena. For those new to M.2 SSDs, M.2 marks the standardization of smaller form factor SSDs to sizes smaller than what we have seen in mSATA. M.2 accommodates both SATA and PCIe performance, while at the same time offering capacities as high as 1TB.

The SM2280S3 M.2 SSD is targeted at system builders and we initially saw its release of the 120GB version in June, followed by 240 and 480GB capacities in Q3, the 240GB capacity on our bench today. M.2 may be new to many but get ready as it will be creating a totally different picture ?en mass? in the SSD arena before long. Better yet, do some digging into the webs ?top M.2 coverage? to get you up to speed on the M.2 form factor!