You may be impressed that the hard state
drive on LSI SF-2281 has been researched and tested from the inside out. However, Kingston has tried to advance a product which
appearance is actually surprised in the most positive way.
Unless you’re interested in the hard state
drives and keep track of all the related info, the SSD market seems to have no upheaval recently. This impression arises
due to the limited number of the existing SSD controller. Samsung 840, Plextor M5 Pro and OCZ Vector, the
correlative representative for Samsung MDX, Marvell
88SS9187 and Indilinx Barefoot 3 platform, are not the new products, but they’re still flagships in terms of performance which doesn’t
have any competition in sight. There’s almost no new controller for the SSD that aims toward premium users. Moreover,
it has turned hard to increase the performance which is usually restricted by
the SATA3 interface bandwidth.
Kingston
SSDNow V300 Solid State Hard Drive
On the other hand, the lack of fast and
clear innovations is profitable for the final users as it leads to the price
war and, at last, making the prices of the products become cheaper. Yes, the
manufacturers of the topping SSD don’t
need to enjoy themselves with the price factor. Such products are attractive
considering their speed trait. Therefore, it’s the second-segment SSD from the company having no enormous
engineering course to be able to set the price more flexibly. We want to imply
that lots of companies choose LSI with
its SandForce controller as their
partner. The latest SF-2281 controller
is actually older than 2 years old, so it’s not as impressive as compared to
the rivals right after it’s released. That’s a noticeable trend the SandForce-platform SSD has become cheaper. Considering the lack of other info, it can be
the subject for this review.
Besides the price reduction, we can see a
completely new segment of the cheap SandForce-platform SSD showing up. They used to be made from cheap MLC flash memory with asynchronous interface,
the SF-2281 controller tried to
hide its low speed by compressing on-the-fly data. Such kind of SSD SATA3 has become very popular and being the
first ones who seized the psychological barrier of using $1
for each stored gigabyte. But today asynchronous flash is becoming the past. It’s not a good handling way on one part of
the SSD makers to use it because
there’re other choices, faster flash with syncing interface had cheaper prices
after the birth of the new manufacturing tech. as a result, entry-level SSD with the accessories can form a flagship
device in performance but not recently.
We can keep track of this process through
the devices of Kingston, a company
which only uses SF-2281 controller
for its SSD. The SSDNow V +200 sample with asynchronous flash has been discarded and replaced with the
new SSDNow V300, to our surprise,
typical for the latest MLC NAND flash with syncing interface. It will be a very interesting product with a
low price, but the performance is pretty high. But can it actually be? we will
check by testing on a 240GB Kingston SSDNow V300 and compare it to Kingston HyperX 3K which regardless of the recent changes, is still locate by the
manufacturers as an orthodox solution.
A close look at 240GB Kingston SSDNow V300
Kingston pays close attention not only to the
product quality but also the way they present in front of the customers. That’s
the reason why the companies usually provide the solutions with many versions.
For example, Kingston SSDNow V300, is available with 4 models: as an
independent SSD or a part of an upgraded set of drive. Of course, the independent
version seems to the most interesting thing as it doesn’t cost much, which is
important for an entry-level product. It’s very basic: SSD is only paced into a
plastic grate along with an insert showing the basic technical specs.
Product
box
Besides the SSD, there’s also a plastic
frame inside. You can stick it to the drive to increase the height from 7 to
9.5 mm is needed. Consequently, SSDNow V300 is compatible to any 2.5-inch slot,
even the ultrathin and universal models.
The
plastic frame inside
