Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB SSD Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

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Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB SSD Review - The Kingston SSDNow V300 is yet another value-oriented SSD in Kingston's wildly successful line of mainstream solid state drives. With the pressures of TLC SSDs squeezing the value market we take a look and see if a standard MLC SSD with 19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND and an SF-2281 processor can keep up with the changing times.
 
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A new 60GB SF-2281 now? I dunno how 1.36W idle can be recommended for a mobile device. See Samsung 840 Pro for 0.31W idle. A mobile device drive probably spends a lot of time idle.
 
It's using Toshiba flash and is a pretty good drive so why not? Unlike most SandForce's with Intel ONFI flash. It's not like SandForce is slow or anything. They're still fast all in and out with over 500 MB/s R/W.

And 1.36W to 0.31W? Seriously? That's splitting hairs. Even for a notebook with a 90W adapter.
 
Part of the consideration with power was the fact that when under load it is middle of the pack compared to the rest of the SSDs.
The 840 Pro is in another price class, and does lead on power consumption at idle, but is geared for another market.
I really think the SF-2281 does well for its age, but SF does need to deliver a new processor soon to keep up with the joneses :)
It is good to see that the SF-2281 can come down to price levels where typical budget minded consumers can snag good performance at a reasonable price.
 
This is probably too late to get any attention but wth.

The 506a firmware that these drives ship with now has much poorer performance than the 505a firmware that this review is based on.
I'm getting 175MB/s Read in ASSSD vs 475MB/s that HardOCP got in their review. This is consistent with other people results with the 506a firmware as a quick Google can confirm. ATTO results are normal @ 500MB/s +. Kingston has no way of downgrading the firmware back to 505a and they have not released firmware based on 507 either. They have no firmware update tool at all as far as I can find.

I have contacted Kingston and have had no response to the huge performance gap between the firmware versions.
I don't want to void my warranty to check if there are hardware differences (eg. less NAND channels) between the drives but I hope not as this would be very underhanded imho.

This a bit bait and switchy in my opinion and I would avoid this drive if you are in the market.
 
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This is probably too late to get any attention but wth.

The 506a firmware that these drives ship with now has much poorer performance than the 505a firmware that this review is based on.
I'm getting 175MB/s Read in ASSSD vs 475MB/s that HardOCP got in their review. This is consistent with other people results with the 506a firmware as a quick Google can confirm. ATTO results are normal @ 500MB/s +. Kingston has no way of downgrading the firmware back to 505a and they have not released firmware based on 507 either. They have no firmware update tool at all as far as I can find.

I have contacted Kingston and have had no response to the huge performance gap between the firmware versions.
I don't want to void my warranty to check if there are hardware differences (eg. less NAND channels) between the drives but I hope not as this would be very underhanded imho.

This a bit bait and switchy in my opinion and I would avoid this drive if you are in the market.

This is a perfect example of why every time an SSD firmware rev changes, it really needs a whole new examination / review.
 
Well I got a response. Not the one I wanted. I recommend to avoid buying this SDD.

"Thanks for your reply. Please note that random speed is not guaranteed for SV300 SSD. We currently do not have firmware update for this drive and downgrade firmware is not available. We will have the firmware update on Kingston site if the new firmware is released."

"If" the new firmware is released doesn't sound very likely.
 
Just updating this post seeing as they are still selling these...

Don't touch the V300.

read these

http://www.overclock.net/t/1457629/psa-about-the-kingston-v300-ssd-probable-foul-play-by-kingston
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2316409
http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1ur11x/discussion_psa_about_the_kingston_v300_ssd/
http://www.overclock.net/t/1380526/kingston-v300-help

Gives you a general idea, Kingston thought it was acceptable to use slower cheaper asynchronous nand and just use the same model number, deeply, massively scummy.

"We use NAND from various manufacturers both synchronous and asynchronous. The first revision you have is made with synchronous and the second asynchronous.
Both versions however conform to our specifications as stated in the datasheet and will enable a good user experience as expected from SSDs. Fast boot, fast application performance, improved battery life and much better random performance versus traditional HDD technology.
If you have any other questions or concerns, please feel free to reply to this e-mail with full email history. Thank you for using Kingston on-line technical support
"

175MB/s Read in ASSSD vs 475MB/s is not a good user experience.

From Newegg

"Hello, I'm Jewel with Kingston Technical Support. We are here to help and can advise on the best settings to get the most out of the V300. Please understand we designed the V300 to be an entry-level SSD with a good mix of price and performance. As you indicated, the V300 can be manufactured with Synchronous or Asynchronous NAND from various Tier 1 NAND manufacturers..."

What a coincidence not a single review drive on the net uses Asynchronous, what. a. surprise. /s

I don't know if [H] ever withdraws awards but this would be the time to do it imho.
 
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Or at the very least [H] should re-review this with the latest firmware. Pretty sneaky for Kingston to give [H] the faster older firmware, but ship new drives with newer slower firmware.

KYLE... Please give an update to your review with the current shipping firmware so customers can get an accurate idea what to expect. Thanks!
 
iirc OCZ pulled this stunt, and AT ran 'em up the pole.

I don't even consider what OCZ as bad as this(It was still scummy), they changed to a different process node not a entirely different, vastly inferior, type of NAND. They also exchanged drives after it all came to light.

Kingston seems happy to hide behind the fact that the ATTO benchmark score is the same (I don't have a HDD full of perfectly compressible data, in-fact mostly the opposite). I get around 33% of the read performance of the reviewed drive.

Or at the very least [H] should re-review this with the latest firmware. Pretty sneaky for Kingston to give [H] the faster older firmware, but ship new drives with newer slower firmware.

KYLE... Please give an update to your review with the current shipping firmware so customers can get an accurate idea what to expect. Thanks!

They have released newer firmware for both the A sync and Sync "versions" of the drive. 505, 507, and 520 are the "good" drives using the same NAND as every review drive. The 506 and 521 firmware are the cheap drives they are trying to pass off as the same model.

Maybe it's just me but if you release a drive that's not compatible with the same firmware, uses different parts and has massively different performance then you might consider calling it a new model.

I'd love to hear some Kyle input myself.
 
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