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REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
When first compiling the initial announcement of the Kingston SSDNow V310 SSD a few weeks back, our staff looked at one another and simply asked “What have they been smoking?” The MSRP was unbelievably high with IOPS unbelievably low. It caused quite a stir, that of which Kingston really didn’t need at that point and time. And then we took a closer look. We looked at what they were trying to achieve and the market they were trying to reach; this being the new SSD user.
Let’s tackle pricing first, that of which isn’t anywhere near the original MSRP of $928. That number should have never been printed and Kingston learned the hard way on that one. Looking at pricing right now in Amazon, it is much lower and can be found at $645 when you include the complete migration bundle…which you will want to do. This isn’t the lowest price on the block and you can find that of the Samsung EVO and Crucial M550 1TB counterparts at a somewhat lower price, but neither contains the migration package we see here.
Next up…performance. The Kingston SSDNow V310 lists IOPS at a high of 40,000 but really, who cares? 99% of consumers don’t even understand IOPS and really, for typical computer use, this performance benchmark should never have even been introduced. IOPS, by the way, are the number of input and output operations that can occur in a second. For the consumer let’s look at throughput, or data transfer speeds, and let’s look at these transfer speeds when they move incompressible files, such as we see in photos, videos and music. The Kingston SSDVNow V310 reaches highs of 500MB/s read and 436MB/s write with AS SSD and these are very good speeds.
Actually let’s look at these speeds a bit closer. As a typical consumer (which you would be in considering this SSD), would you believe that you would be lucky to ever hit the posted spec performance even .05% of the time? It is absolutely true. In typical consumer use, the only thing that really matters is the disk access speed, which is typically 0.01ms. When you compare this to a hard drive which might typically be 9.2ms, you can see why a SSD is so much visibly faster than a hard drive. What you might not realize, however, is that even the experts could never differentiate between the best and worst SSDs through typical daily PC use. That’s a fact.
Last but not least, let’s examine the included accessories of this SSD, that of which include the SSD, an external SSD case, USB 3.0 cable, cloning software, a desktop mounting bracket and easy to follow instructions. This is what all migration kits should have included a long time ago, but never have. There is no necessity to try to figure out how to migrate by connecting power and data cables within the system any longer. Simply insert the DVD, place the Kingston SSD in the external case, connect the USB cable from the system to that external case, and follow the instructions on the DVD. From there, simply replace your hard drive with an SSD. After you have switched that hard drive for the SSD, place the hard drive in the external case and you now have external storage. It’s as simple as that.
All in all, we like this SSD and think it is definitely ideal for those transitioning from hard drive to SSD.
I took the time and read the review. Wasted 5 minutes. And wasted 5 minutes more cause I’m even writing this. Again, lame review, basically apologizing for poor performance and mediocre price, while you can get everything in the bunde of a dime.
So no, not a good option for a new SSD user (at 600 bucks), everyone even thinking of buying this drive must be either nuts or living in an underground hole, since crucial and samsung are the obvious choice here.
Kingston has no market share for a reason. And that reason is stated in this review.
Pass
Aside from crazy pricing i really can’t wrap my head around the fact, that they managed to extract soo little performance outta that drive. Micron 20nm is better than this, so is the Phison S8 (just look at the Corsair Force LS). Either they are using some really crappy NAND bins or they just went ahead and detuned the firmware to a point, that it can barely be called an SSD (im guessing the latter).
Either way, unless this is a lot cheaper than competition, i really really don’t see the point in buying this. I mean, m500 retails on newegg for 435 bucks. Thats like 200$ (yes, 2 benjamins ) cheaper for a much much better drive.
This could sell pretty decently at lets say 399$.
But, but, but it’s already selling for 46% off at Amazon. It MUST be a bargain.
This site continues to be my source for incompetent reviews of ssds. With review articles such as this, I will always have a good laugh. Thank you for your incompetence.
“This is what all migration kits should have included a long time ago…”
What is with the almost emotional numerous mentions to the migration package? I have the same cheap plastic case and Acronis True Image that came with their V300 that came with the upgrade kit from years ago. Typical Kingston, repackaging features instead of reinventing.
Even their pricing scheme is dubious. Kingston are too slick for their own good.
“This is what all migration kits should have included a long time ago”
Actually somebody did do this years ago. Kingston packaged the same cheap plastic case and migration items with the V300. As with the Fury SSD this typical Kingston, just repackaging the same old stuff.