Exclusive: Kingston SSDNow V200 Review: New(ish) And Improved At Last! Discussion

[Jerry Jackson]

Behold the majesty that is the solid state drive (SSD). When SSDs first appeared on the consumer market every laptop owner who saw one immediately wanted one. Unlike hard disk drives (HDDs) with moving parts that are prone to failure due to vibration or impact, SSDs have no moving parts (similar to a USB flash drive or thumb drive) and are significantly faster than the hard drive in your laptop.

But what happens if a mighty SSD actually turns out slower than an old hard drive? That was the problem facing the Kingston SSDNow V200 ... a solid state drive that didn't deliver SSD-like performance. Months after Kingston took the drive off the market, the V200 is back and promises to be better than ever. Is it good enough to help Kingston's tarnished image?

In a word, YES.

Read the full content of this Article: Exclusive: Kingston SSDNow V200 Review: New(ish) And Improved At Last!

Related Articles:

• Nine Months Later, Thailand's Rising Tide Still Lifts HDD Prices
• Western Digital My Passport 2TB Review
• 750GB Seagate Momentus XT Review: The Latest and Greatest Hybrid Drive
• Battle of the 1TB Laptop Hard Drives: Samsung vs. Western Digital
• Kingston V+ 100 96GB SSD Review
• OCZ Vertex 3 120GB Review
• Crucial M4 128GB SSD Review

[knight427]

Nice review, I really like the before/after comparison. Still, it's hard to get excited about these low speeds on a drive that doesn't have an ownership history yet, especially when you can get much faster drives for much less.

Deal-of-the-day is Crucial's M4 256GB SSD for $180 at Newegg and Amazon. Newegg is selling the Kingston SSDNow V200 256GB model for $320, Amazon has it at $220, but I'm not sure if it is the new version, or an old stock of the bad version offered by resellers.

[HTWingNut]

Great review. What about power consumption? I find that an important deciding factor for a notebook usually.

[Jerry Jackson]

Nice review, I really like the before/after comparison. Still, it's hard to get excited about these low speeds on a drive that doesn't have an ownership history yet, especially when you can get much faster drives for much less.

Deal-of-the-day is Crucial's M4 256GB SSD for $180 at Newegg and Amazon. Newegg is selling the Kingston SSDNow V200 256GB model for $320, Amazon has it at $220, but I'm not sure if it is the new version, or an old stock of the bad version offered by resellers.

The Crucial M4 256GB is indeed a GREAT deal but it's worth noting that the M4 has a standard 9.5mm thickness compared to the 7mm thickness of the V200 ... so it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, particularly if you have something like a ThinkPad X220 or X230 or one of the many other thin-and-light laptops that use 7mm drives.

[Jerry Jackson]

Great review. What about power consumption? I find that an important deciding factor for a notebook usually.

We recorded just under 0.5W at idle and 1.86W active (in line with Kingston's advertised specs of 0.491W idle and 1.87W active).

[knight427]

The Crucial M4 256GB is indeed a GREAT deal but it's worth noting that the M4 has a standard 9.5mm thickness compared to the 7mm thickness of the V200 ... so it isn't an apples-to-apples comparison, particularly if you have something like a ThinkPad X220 or X230 or one of the many other thin-and-light laptops that use 7mm drives.

Good point. Crucial also offers a 7mm version of the M4 currently priced at $195.

[Voldenuit]

The Crucial M4 256GB is indeed a GREAT deal but it's worth noting that the M4 has a standard 9.5mm thickness compared to the 7mm thickness of the V200 ..

There are M4 drives that are 7 mm thick.

As are Plextor M3s. And the excellent Samsung 830.

All of which are cheaper than the Kingston V200, and faster.

JMicron.

You could have stopped the review at that word.

[knight427]

To be fair, we are looking at prices today, but this review will be up for years. I doubt this drive will sell much at all at current prices, which means the price will come down. At some point it may be cheaper than these other drives, so it is nice to have a full review to help with those future buying decisions.

[luTin.]

Indeed very nice and efficient review.

However, Jerry Jackson, may i ask you on which platform did you do the tests ? I 'd like to compare my Crystal Mark results with yours. i am on X58.

Thanks

[elpedro8]

We recorded just under 0.5W at idle and 1.86W active (in line with Kingston's advertised specs of 0.491W idle and 1.87W active).

Hi, I know this thread is quite old but I just bought a slightly used laptop with Kingston V200 128GB and I want to be sure about the consumption numbers.I may be looking at wrong figures but Kingston datasheet states 2W idle consumption in comparison to yours measured 0.5W. Are you certain about that? Why would Kingston state such wrong numbers? Thanks