Kingston SSDNow V300 (120GB & 240GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 30, 2013 12:30 PM ESTFinal Words
I have one issue with the V300: There's nothing particular in it that would differentiate it from the other SandForce based SSDs. While Kingston said they did lots of customization and worked closely with SandForce/LSI, at least in our testing there aren't any striking differences. It's possible that the tweaks Kingston applied are at a such low level that they won't really impact the end-user experience but that raises a question if the tweaks are needed at all as you'll get the same performance with the stock firmware. Kingston may of course be using slower or lower endurance NAND that required customization but as it stands, this is all just speculation. I'm still a bit disappointed that Kingston couldn't give us more details about their customizations because it would really be great to know how much SandForce allows customization and what the customization can do.
| Price Comparison (4/30/2013) | |||||
| 60/64GB | 120/128GB | 240/256GB | |||
| Kingston SSDNow V300 | $70 | $110 | $200 | ||
| Kingston HyperX 3K | N/A | $120 | $230 | ||
| Corsair Neutron GTX | N/A | $125 | $220 | ||
| Corsair Neutron | N/A | $120 | $200 | ||
| Corsair Force GS | N/A | $130 | $210 | ||
| Plextor M5 Pro | N/A | $130 | $230 | ||
| Plextor M5S | N/A | $110 | $190 | ||
| Crucial m4 | $80 | $130 | $200 | ||
| Intel SSD 520 | $100 | $145 | $270 | ||
| Intel SSD 330 | $90 | N/A | $220 | ||
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | N/A | $150 | N/A | ||
| Samsung SSD 840 | N/A | $110 | $190 | ||
| OCZ Vector | N/A | $140 | $270 | ||
| Mushkin Chronos Deluxe | N/A | $130 | $185 | ||
Because the V300 doesn't bring anything special to the market, pricing is more important than ever. The V300 is affordable but not exceptionally cheap. Right now you can find Plextor M5S and Samsung SSD 840 for the same price or even for slightly less, and I would rather pick one of them instead of the V300. However, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the prices quoted in the table because pricing fluctuates and NewEgg is just one reseller. If you're buying an SSD, I suggest that you follow the prices for a few days and try to catch a hot sale.
In general I think Kingston should differentiate their SSDs more because the V300 and HyperX 3K are too similar. For example giving the HyperX 3K a 5-year warranty would help justify its high-end positioning and a higher price too, but currently Kingston is selling two very similar products at nearly identical price points. That's not the ideal way to do business, especially when one of the products is supposed to be a budget mainstream drive while the other is aimed towards enthusiasts.
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eddieobscurant - Saturday, May 4, 2013 - link
I think kingston is using very low quality nand for the v300 series. The 128gb model only has 64tb tbw before reaches endurance limits and the 256gb only 128tb according to their official pdf datasheet. http://www.kingston.com/datasheets/sv300s3_us.pdf That would mean around 500 p/e. Samsung tlc drives have at least 1000 p/e. Could you please ask kingston about this?Kristian Vättö - Saturday, May 4, 2013 - link
That's most likely with a random write centric workload. E.g. Crucial M500 is rated at 72TB and Samsung SSD 840 Pro at 73TB, but the workloads for the figure mainly consist of small random writes. Let me send Kingston an email and ask about the exact workload so we'll know better.eddieobscurant - Saturday, May 4, 2013 - link
thanks, could you also ask if the warranty is voided if someone exceeds this limit?Diagrafeas - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
Could you ask the about the firware updates, because 506 isn't working as it should.Could give the option to flash 505 or a fixed 507...
Kristian Vättö - Monday, May 6, 2013 - link
I'll ask about that too. Already sent an email about the endurance so I'll ask about the firmwares when Kingston replies.eddieobscurant - Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - link
Did you get any reply from kingston?Kristian Vättö - Friday, May 17, 2013 - link
I got a reply that they'll check and get back to me, but they haven't done that yet. You may want to drop me an email (kristian@anandtech.com) so I can reach to you directly when I receive an answer.Davidjan - Saturday, May 4, 2013 - link
Really cool! Storage will not be a problem on Android phones and tablets. Use this to add storage http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyfei/mini-m...Just check it out, last 15 hours to go to get it.
Davidjan - Saturday, May 4, 2013 - link
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyfei/mini-m...spooky2th - Sunday, May 5, 2013 - link
I've had a Kingston 240GB HyperX 3K since Aug. 2012. And it is fantastic as far as I'm concerned. Even with Vista Home Premium, 64Bit. No trim support in Vista so I have to manually optimize the SSD every week or 2. Optimizing the SSD only takes a minute. Other than that, I am a very happy camper.