Price When Reviewed

250GB: $29.99 I 500GB: $43:99 I 1TB: $64.99 I 2TB: $139.99 I 4TB: $219.99

Best Prices Today: Kingston NV2 SSD

$29.99

$35

You received’t discover a extra inexpensive PCIe 4.0 SSD than Kingston’s NV2. It’s slower than the overwhelming majority of its friends, however being NVMe, it’s nonetheless enough for many customers and most on a regular basis duties.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs to study competing merchandise.

What are the Kingston NV2’s options?

The NV2 is a PCIe 4.0 x4, 2280 type issue (22mm vast, 80mm lengthy) M.2, NVMe SSD using a DRAM-less (HMB/host reminiscence buffer) design. The NAND is 144-layer Kingston-labeled QLC dealt with by a Silicon Motion SM2267XTV controller.

We examined the 1TB capability of the NV2, however rated efficiency varies vastly by capability: For the 250GB capability it’s 3GBps studying/1.3GBps writing, for the 500GB and 1TB capacities it’s 3.5GBps/2.1GBps, and for the 2TB and 4TB capacities its 3.5GBps/2.8GBps.

Jon L. Jacobi / Foundry

The NV2 is warrantied for 3 years or 320TBW (terabytes that may be written) per terabyte of capability. Those are paltry in comparison with most NVMe SSDs, and the low TBW is a lifeless giveaway that the NAND is QLC.

That mentioned 320TBW per TB isn’t the bottom ranking we’ve seen: The Sabrent Rocket Q4, Corsair MP600 Core Mini, and Crucial P3 — all QLC drives — are rated for 225TBW/TB, 250TBW/TB, and 220TBW/TB, respectively.

You are taking a little bit of an opportunity on the NV2 and QLC drives normally, although endurance is mostly understood to be higher (typically significantly) than vendor TBW rankings, that are factoring in monetary legal responsibility. Not solely that, however most customers write far much less knowledge than they suppose.

Still, you didn’t suppose you’d get Seagate-like backing at these costs, did you? What costs are these? See beneath.

How a lot does the NV2 value?

At the time of this writing the 25GB NV2 was $28, the 500GB was $38, our 1TB drive value $52, the 2TB was $100, and the 4TB was $187 — all on Amazon (Kingston’s MSRP is $10 to $30 increased). Those costs, of us, are a comparative pittance.

How quick is the Kingston NV2?

All NVMe SSDs are quick — we’re evaluating the thoroughbreds of storage right here. But the NV2 is certainly one of many slowest such units we’ve examined. It ensconced itself comfortably in next-to-last place, simply forward of the Crucial P3, a really related design however solely PCIe 3.0.

So actually, the NV2 is the slowest PCIe 4.0 SSD we’ve ever examined, and it’s not even notably near the subsequent slowest — the Solidigm P41 Plus.

While slower than most, our 1TB NV2 really exceeded Kingston’s rankings (see above). Note that Kingston was unwilling to fill out our fact-check sheet, so we quoted the rankings from the corporate’s web site.

Jon L. Jacobi

Again, the NV2 was off the NVMe efficiency tempo in CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K efficiency exams. Only the PCIe 3.0 Crucial P3 was slower, and never in each check.

Our 48GB transfers had been a relative jaunt for the NV2, which completed tied with, or in entrance of all the things however WD’s glorious TLC SSD, the SN770M. These form of copies are the place most customers shall be observing a progress bar, so have essentially the most salient influence on efficiency satisfaction.

The 450GB write was the place the NV2 principally fell off a efficiency cliff, plummeting to a median write pace of 140MBps when it ran out of secondary (QLC written as SLC) cache. Keep in thoughts that our check mannequin was a 1TB drive, whereas all of the others within the chart had been 2TB with extra NAND for secondary caching. No doubt, a 2TB or 4TB mannequin would’ve completed with a extra aggressive time.

Below you’ll be able to see the drop in sustained write pace illustrated. The tiny bumps are the occasional bounce as much as 400/500MBps. The NV2 spent nearly all of the time on the slower fee.

Again, I need to level out that we’re speaking NVMe right here, which is way sooner than some other kind of storage you’re more likely to make use of. But inside these boundaries, you’re undoubtedly getting what you pay for. Or didn’t pay for, extra exactly.

Should I purchase the Kingston NV2?

Yes, should you’re on a decent finances and might’t afford the rest. It’s additionally appropriate for exterior storage the place the USB and even Thunderbolt busses aren’t quick sufficient to warrant a top-tier SSD.

On the opposite hand, undoubtedly skip the NV2 should you’re an fanatic or prosumer usually writing very giant quantities of knowledge. It’s additionally not the optimum drive for working an working system as a result of comparatively slothful 4K efficiency.

How we check

Drive exams presently make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which additionally runs the OS.

Each check is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower as a result of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This is much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with their far sooner NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can differ by capability as a result of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND accessible for secondary caching. Vendors additionally often swap parts. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.