This is Kingston’s second date with the brilliant SandForce SF-2281 controller, which can also be found in the company’s high-end HyperX drives. This is the controller of choice at the moment and can be found in most of the SATA 6Gbps drives on the market. Unlike the HyperX drive, the SSDNow is aimed at those who still want solid performance, but have slightly less money to burn.
As such, Kingston has decked out this drive with slightly more affordable Intel asynchronous NAND flash memory, shaving around 30% off the total cost. At just $1.75 per gigabyte, the V+200 is one of the cheapest SATA 6Gbps SSDs we’ve seen. Like most Kingston SSDs, this one arrives with a healthy selection of extra goodies, including an external case with a USB adapter, Molex-to-SATA power adapter and 3.5in drive bay rails. There’s even some free cloning software, making this an excellent upgrade kit for those looking to move from a mechanical monstrosity.
Given the use of the SF-2281 controller, we expected excellent performance, and the results in the Anvil’s Storage Utilities benchmark didn’t disappoint. Sequential 4MB read performance was one of the fastest we’ve seen, but the SSDNow was still considerably slower than the amazing OCZ Vertex 3. Sequential read performance followed the same trend and the results for smaller file sizes hovered near the top of our past results.
As a result, we have to give this impressive little pack the thumbs up. You’ll be hard pressed to find another drive that delivers such excellent performance at this price and includes a bunch of useful extras for upgraders.
Available from Kingston www.kingston.com, retailing for $210.
APC rating: 9/10 (Editor's Choice)