Are you a casual computer user? Most people are. Here at UMLan we try to cover every category of equipment out there which is oriented from computer enthusiasts to a casual computer users. Kingston has started out by providing general population with necessary ram components. Over the year Kingston has expanded in to Solid State Drive and now even in to enthusiasts markets. Today we have a privilege of reviewing one of the Solid State Drives which is offered by Kingston SSD Now V200. V200 is oriented towards general population market and provides its used a suitable replacement for some of the mechanical hard drives out there. Let's take some time and take a look at V200 in detail as we feel it would be good replacement drive for your laptop or desktop.

About the Product

Following information is taken from the Kingston's web site.

SSDNow V200 Drive

Revive your computer and stretch your system without stretching your budget. Kingston’s SSDNow V200 makes it easy. Designed for notebook and desktop hard drive replacements and upgrades, it maximizes your computer investment while boosting the performance of the system and its applications. It’s available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities and in kits that make switching to an SSD easy and affordable. Kits include cables, brackets, cloning software and HDD enclosure and installation video — everything you need to get started. More reliable and more durable than a traditional hard drive, it also runs silent and cool while making computers more responsive than ever.

Features

• Faster — boots system and applications faster
• Reliable — with no moving parts, solid-state drives are less likely to fail than a standard hard drive
• Convenient — all-in-one kits with all the components for easy installation
• Multiple capacities — to fit your needs
• Silent — runs silent and cool
• Guaranteed — three-year warranty, free technical support and legendary Kingston reliability

Specifications

PACKAGE CONTENTS

Desktop Kit
– 3.5" Bracket & Mounting Screws
– SATA Data & Power Cables
– Hard Drive Cloning Software4
– Installation Guide
Notebook Kit
– 2.5" USB Enclosure
– Hard Drive Cloning Software4
– Installation Guide

Now that we got basic information out of the way, lets take a closer look at SSD Now 200V.

Closer look

Front Shot		Rear Shot

It is worth to mention that V200 comes in three different storage capacities 64, 128 and 256 GB. Connection interface of these drive is SATA 3.0 but is also backwards compatible to SATA 2.0 .What this means is if your machine capable of using SATA 3.0 drives you could be transferring data as fast ad 6gbps and if you only capable of using SATA 2.0 connection then you will be going about half, 3gbps. If you need to understand comparison of transfer speed please refer to google.

Packaging		Desktop Upgrade Kit

V200 comes in two different kits, notebook or desktop. We are going to take a look at the desktop upgrade kit as it comes with all you need to replace your old hard drive or just add on a new one for extra speed/storage. Granted you should really have your OS installed on this hard drive but you would have no issues of using V200 for just simple storage.

Out of the box		SSD Now 200v

The contents of the V200 Desktop Upgrade Kit are Installation DVD, Hard Drive Cloning software, SATA data and power cable along with 3.5" mounting hardware and of course V200 itself. Very simple package here but then again, you get pretty much everything you need to get up and running in a matter of minutes. Depending of the size of the V200 you have purchased you can see the capacity clearly on the front of the unit.

2.5" Format		SATA Connector

If you have ever seen a 2.5" notebook hard drives then V200 will be no surprise however, you will be surprised just how light it is. Using the same SATA connection in your computer V200 makes it a pretty much easy and simple upgrade solution.

Size Comparison

Some earlier cases do not have dedicated space for SSD because of the 2.5" format so Kingston provides a handy hardware converter so you can mount your new SSD in to the 3.5" hard drive slot. Actual installation take minutes and as long as you follow the instructional dvd you should be up in running in no time.

 

Testing

To get better understating of what we have here and properly assess the quality and price of V200 Desktop Upgrade Kit we turn to benchmarks. Today we are going to use Crystal Disk Mark, HD Tune Pro, ATTO Disk Benchmark

GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD3 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7850 2GB GDDR5 Video Card OC Edition

Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition Sandy Bridge-E 3.3GHz (3.9GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 130W Six-Core Desktop Processor

OCZ Agility 3 AGT3-25SAT3-60G 2.5" 60GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory

Cooler Master 1200 Watts Modular Power Supply

Our first benchmark was Crystal Disk Mark. Here we tried to get a base of read and write speeds I guess it is worth to mention these benchmarks were performed with true 6gbps controller so the numbers are here as good as you can possibly get.

Crystal Disk 1k		Crystal Disk 4k

What we were looking here is sequential read and write speeds. First test we did with 1000 MB. Here we saw speeds as high as 315 MB/s read and 210 MB/s. Increasing the testing span to 4000MB we saw a very little improvement here of 316 MB/s read and 206 MB/s write.

HD Tune Pro Read		HD Tune Pro Write

Previous benchmark showed us that V200 performed well above what Kingston promises's. To back that info up we used HD Tune Pro to look for a second "opinion" data. As you can see from the screen shots above we got a sustained average read speed of 332 MB/s and write 213 MB/s. Access time is very well expected here of less than 1 ms. Average access time for a mechanical hard drives are usually anywhere from 6 to 13 ms.

ATTO		PC Mark Vantage

Kingston uses ATTO to benchmark their drives before they leave their QA area. This is how they get the read and write speed numbers which they put on the package. We did exact the same but on our system. Looking at ATTO benchmark we can clearly see that read transfer rate was 315MB/s and write 211 MB/s. This is way above what Kingston promises. So what kind of speed can you expect from this drive in different applications? We went directly to PC Mark Vantage to find that out. Take a look at the screen shot for more info on performance you might get in different kind of applications with V200.

Conclusion

Ok let's face it, technology is changing so fast that it is nearly impossible to keep up with all of the changes. However when you need the replacement part you want it to last quite a bit. When hard drives fail its a scary thought and with mechanical hard drive you are in risk of losing data in a matter of seconds. Some warnings of wearing of the hard drives are extreme heat and noise. If you hear of feel anything that is not expected, seek a new drive or back up your data immediately. An upgrade kit is an always good idea. Kingston makes it very easy to duplicate your original hard drive to V200 as it provides all of the necessary tools to do so. In this particular package Kingston included software called Acronis which is a worlds popular hard drive maintenance and cloning tool. With this tool and a set of good instructions (also included in the upgrade kit) you are un and running in a matter of minutes. This is all great but how much is this Desktop Upgrade Kit cost and is it worth it? We turned to Newegg.com for price. Current price of 128GB V200 is about 120$ with free shipping (date of the review 7/9/2012). What was surprising is the single comment which was left for this particular model and the user was unsatisfied with performance. No matrices were given to the public so we couldn't compare our data with a random user. However looking at just the price vs performance vs storage V200 is very much comfortably priced against its competitors and I strongly feel that V200 is a right choice for a mechanical drive replacement. If you are looking for just a replacement drive for your every day use then V200 is for you. However if you are looking for a performance SSD you should be looking at the Hyper X series of SSDs from Kingston. Hyper X SSDs are generally oriented towards gamers and provide great reading and writing speeds. Check out our review of Hyper X 120 and Hyper X 3K 240 . Over all our experience with Kingston's SSD Now V200 has been nothing more than a pleasant one and I would like to award a solid 10/10 for its value vs performance matrices. A great alternative for your old school mechanical hard drives.

 

Some pros we found:

Simple installation and cloning.

Good read and write speeds of the drive.

Very competitive to some similar SSD drives.

Over the top performance with 6gbps controller.

SATA 3 and SATA 2 backwards compatible.

Some cons we found:

None that we could find.