When it comes to storage devices, Kingston has been in the market for quite a while now. They have USB drives, SSDs, SD, SDHC, SDXC memory cards and more; in fact you may have heard of their data traveller series.
Unless you have been living under a rock so to speak, you should be aware that any slow PC or Mac computer that is showing signs of slow speed or performance could be resurrected by upgrading its HDD with a spinning platter to an SSD with no moving parts.
Using a Solid State Drive means:
- Better performance
- Improved reliability including reduced boot up times
- Faster page load times
- Cooler laptop or desktop operation and
- A good life span.
Due to those great benefits, SSDs started out being very expensive and they could cost over £200 just to pick up a 150GB storage space, where an HDD could give you up to 1TB for the same price.
Fortunately, SSD technology has evolved, manufacturing process and parts have improved and it means companies like Kingston can sell a drive like the one we are reviewing here, the 240GB Kingston’s SSDNow V300 solid-state drive at a low price. You can now revive your computer without spending eye-watering amounts!
The V300 series is 10x faster than a hard drive, and that top line is enough to get you to upgrade. The V series is at the entry level end of Kingston’s SSD line-up and if you want even more speed, you could go for the Hyper X range or even higher models, but for anyone who just wants some performance gain over their current HDD, the V series will do just fine.
The V300 uses SandForce controller customized for Kingston and in the box you have a migration kit for easy migration and installation. If you just need an upgrade, you have access to multiple capacities or you can go crazy and have more than one installed.
For your bucks, Kingston also gives you a three-year warranty and free technical support if you need it. Just to clarify, you can also buy the standalone version with no desktop upgrade kit, so if you’re using this with a laptop, you can save extra cash too.
Installing the Kingston SSDNow V300 solid-state drive to my 2011 MacBook Pro was very straight forward; they provide simple and clear instructions on the packaging and if you like, you can watch the installation video available on the included CD ROM, if you still have an optical drive to load it.
Depending on whether you are upgrading or performing a fresh install, the later is quicker. Upgrading time will depend on how much data you need cloning, versus a fresh installation that requires no data copy.
Without boring you with benchmark test results and sequential read and write speeds, benchmark test which measures real life intensive activities or processes such as virus scans, importing photos and videos, playing games, editing and exporting movies etc., shows a good SSD drive.
You will notice the increase in speed without a doubt. The first difference you will notice is how quickly your computer switches on and off or if you have your PC in sleep mode, you will notice how quickly you can resume your work. With no moving parts, there’s less noise coming from our PC and with no moving parts, the fans are working a little less trying to keep the drive cool.
If you are looking for an SSD that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, then this is for you. It offers a clear performance boost, it’s reliable and you can get the desktop upgrade kit without spending a lot extra. Installation is very easy, and you may not even require watching the instruction video to get started.
As always, if you are upgrading your drive, make sure you have you data backed up.
The SSD drive used for this review was provided by KingstonMemoryCards.co.uk.
