The drive
Here's how the older V+ drives lined up during mid-October 2009.| Kingston SSDNow V+ drive | 64GB | 128GB | 256GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read speed (up to) | 220MB/s | 220MB/s | 220MB/s |
| Write speed (up to) | 140MB/s |
170MB/s | 180MB/s |
| Drive buffer | 128MB | 128MB | 128MB |
| Etail price (19/10/09) | £135 |
£260 |
£500 |
| £ per GB | 2.11 |
2.03 |
1.95 |
Our review showed that performance was solid enough, because it was based on the Samsung PB22-J controller. Further testing showed that it was a little slow when writing small-sized files - something not shown on the specification table.
Here's the same type of table with the new V+ drives:
| Kingston SSDNow V+ drive (2nd gen) | 64GB | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read speed (up to) | 230MB/s | 230MB/s | 230MB/s | 230MB/s |
| Write speed (up to) | 180MB/s |
180MB/s | 180MB/s | 180MB/s |
| Drive buffer | 128MB | 128MB | 128MB | 128MB |
| Etail price (01/02/10) | £160 |
£310 |
£600 | £1200 |
| £ per GB | 2.50 |
2.42 |
2.34 |
2.34 |
Price hikes
The increase in the cost of underlying chips results with prices which are 20 per cent higher than three months' ago, going against the grain of general hardware pricing over time. Kingston will no doubt counter value arguments with the belief that the new drives offer faster performance - sequential read and write performance is consistently higher across the whole range - but £160 for the 64GB model, whilst competitive with other premium drives, is hard to stomach.
You need to look at the part numbers to be able to discern the difference between the same-capacity V+ drives. The new drives are identified with the addition of an extra 'P' in the SNVP325-S2 prefix. As an example, the 128GB model is known as the SNVP325-S2128GB. Further, the model number has increased from '225 to '325.
There are two variations of the new V+, by the way. A retail bundle is also available that ships with a USB 2.0 caddy, drive rails so that it fits in a 3.5in bay, and power/SATA cables. The premium for the SNVP325-S2B is around £10, including VAT, representing good value. Making the deal sweeter, Kingston bundles in the excellent Acronis True Image HD drive-backup software.
Kingston continues to back the drive with a three-year warranty that's now become standard for the industry. Being practically shockproof, the drive will withstand an operating shock of 1,500G, as well as a continuous operating vibration shock of 2.5G.
Drive reliability is expressed as the mean time before failure of some 1,000,000 hours - that's 114 years if used 24/7 - so you'd be considered unlucky if it failed within, say, five years.
A drive's life expectancy is one thing, but decent performance during operation is another. The vagaries of the operating system-to-SSD protocol can translate to sub-standard performance as more data is thrown on to it.
TRIM rolled in
As a defence against the drive slowing down as the internal chips' pages are filled, a number of manufacturers have introduced what is termed a TRIM command, which seeks to keep the drive purring along at near-new levels.
Kingston is rolling in the TRIM command to these drives from the get-go, which is a definite bonus compared to the older V+ that's now effectively been discontinued.
Hooking up to your PC via a standard SATA 3Gbps and presented in a regular 2.5in form factor, the magic is contained inside.
Kingston is now using a Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller that rolls in the aforementioned TRIM support. Complementing the controller, Toshiba MLC NAND chips line the inside of the second-generation V+ drive. Keeping performance up to scratch, a 128MB on-drive cache from Micron is used to buffer operations.
