Kingston SSDNow V+100 128GB SSD Review

Capacity, Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The Kingston V+100 128GB has a user accessible 119GB in free space after the overprovisioning and Windows take their share. This is only about 7% overprovisioning which is lower than we have seen with other drives but just about the norm these days.

If you’ve skipped to the last page, you should know that the drive comes bundled with several goodies such as a SATA cable, drive mount rails, Molex to SATA power cord, a USB 2.0 cable and an external enclosure. The external enclosure allows you to connect to the computer via USB 2.0 to migrate your data using the included software. This is a really nice feature, especially if you have a laptop because extra SATA ports are not available. To use the drive in the enclosure as an external data drive would be a colossal waste as the USB 2.0 interface will cap the data transfer bandwidth well below what the SSD is capable of.

As far as performance goes, the V+100 performance exceeded my expectations that were based on experience with the earlier drives with the same controller. Kingston and Toshiba have done a really nice job on reworking the firmware to get a nice performance boost. Their “always on” and OS independent garbage collection is more aggressive and can help mitigate the performance degradation of long-term use on a system that does not support TRIM. This said, if you are running RAID array(s), Mac OS X, or a Windows version prior to 7, this drive was made with you in mind as all of those do not support TRIM.

Editors Note: In case you were wondering, Kingston has since told us that the
controller is slightly different and has undergone a die shrink down to 32nm so the firmware used
on this drive will not work on the older V+ drives.

With a retail price of $289.99, the V+100 will set you back roughly $2.44 per usable GB. However, you must take into consideration the value the accessories add. You can buy the drive without the upgrade kit for $278.99 or $2.34 per usable GB, which is a little above the average price of a 128GB SSD these days. With most other drives, you typically only see 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter plates at best so having the option for the full bundle is a nice perk. In addition, Kingston offers a 3-year warranty behind their good name along with free 24/7 support.

Legit Bottom Line: The Kingston V+100 128GB SSD is a much improved version of the V+ drives of an earlier generation and rivals the performance of others in its class. Bundled with a very generous set of accessories and “always on” garbage collection, Kingston has done a nice job to appeal to a wide user base regardless of platform.