Legit Storage Reviews
Kingston 128GB V+ Series SNV325-S2 SSD Review
| Manufacturer: | Kingston |
| Product: | SNV325-S2/128GB |
| Date: | Tue, Jan 26, 2010 - 12:00 AM |
| Written By: | Nathan Kirsch - |
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Final Thoughts and Conclusions
Kingston Technology's second generation of their SSDNow V+ Series of SSDs performed very well and was stutter free no matter what the task was that we threw at it on the desktop or in our notebook. The Kingston SSDNow V+ was said to have sequential read speeds of up to 230MB/sec. and write speeds of up to 180MB/sec. We were able to meet or exceed those rated speeds when using benchmarks like ATTO. This is clearly a quick drive and performed on par with the first generation V+ series drives when it comes to sequential speeds. When you look at specific file sizes the second generation of the V+ series did mediocre with 4K file sizes, but did great with 512K files as we saw in some of the random access tests in HD Tune. The SNV325-S2 series of drives are a great choice for the mainstream SSD market. This drive is not aimed at the enterprise market, so 4K file transfers shouldn't be a huge deal.
When it comes to pricing, the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series SNV325-S2B/128GB retails for $528.00 plus shipping. When you look for prices online at a site like Newegg you will find prices range from $245 to $445, so this drive once it arrives will be the most expensive drive for this capacity. The street price will obviously be lower than the suggested price, so time will tell where the drive fits into the market. The nice thing about this drive is that it supports TRIM functionality right out of the box. You don't have to mess around with firmware updates or anything, which is nice. This drive has the ability to have the firmware updated, so further features or enhancements might be possible down the road.
Overall, the second generation of V+ series drives are very solid and make a great alternative to a traditional hard drive. Owners of the first generation of the V+ series shouldn't be upset, though, as their SSD still performs around the same level of this drive. Those first generation drives didn't support TRIM when they were released, but the Samsung controller can support TRIM functionality with a firmware update. Other SSD brands using the same controller released new firmware versions last month to enable this feature. We are not sure if Kingston plans on releasing a firmware update for their drives, but if they do that would be nice! Just for fun we called Kingston Tech Support to see about a firmware update for the original drives and after a brief 16 minute wait we found out a firmware update is pending and that it hasn't passed internal testing yet. They said if it passes testing that we can expect something around the middle of February 2010. For now if you want guaranteed TRIM support you'll have to go with the second generation drive.
Legit Bottom Line: The second generation of Kingston SSDNow V+ SSDs are solid performing mainstream drives that come in capacities of up to 512GB and feature TRIM support!
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| Review Index |
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Page 1 - Kingston's SNV325-S2/128GB SSD
Page 2 - Inside The 2nd Gen SSDNow V+ Drive Page 3 - The Test System Page 4 - HD Tach v3.0.4.0 Page 5 - HD Tune v3.50 Page 6 - HD Tune v3.50 - Random Access Page 7 - SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Page 8 - CrystalDiskMark v2.2 Page 9 - ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34 Page 10 - PCMark Vantage Page 11 - AS SSD Benchmark Page 12 - Capacity and Windows 7 Page 13 - Final Thoughts and Conclusions |
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