Kingston V200 256GB

When is a budget SSD not a budget SSD? When it’s the Kingston V200 256GB. The Kingston V200 256GB is hardly what one would term budget given the R4,800 price tag . Even before examining the performance of this drive the immediate shock is the price difference between the V200 256GB and the HyperX 240GB. With barely R800 between them the leap from budget to high performance is not as large as one might expect.

Putting aside the price difference, the Kingston V200 256GB SSD uses a new JMicron SATA 6Gbps controller. This is the first JMicron controller to be seen that supports SATA 6Gbps. The V200 256GB has, as its name suggests, a theoretical capacity of 256GB. However, thanks to the formatting taxman, the real world capacity is a mere 238GB. The loss of 18GB is hardly a disaster in the world of spinning platters but for those spending just under R5,000 a loss of 18GB is a bitter pill to swallow. The V200 does come packed with features including TRIM and S.M.A.R.T. support.

Since the V200 256GB is classed as a budget drive it would be unfair to expect benchmark results in the same region as the Kingston Hyper X or the OCZ Vertex 3. On paper the V200 256GB has a maximum sequential read/ write performance of up to 300/ 230MB/s. In real life these numbers are a bit optimistic. As a brand new drive the V200 256GB manages a sequential read/write performance of 253.48/ 209.17MB/s and after being subjected to a bit of wear and tear those figures dropped to 247.22MB/s and 208.76MB/s for read and write respectively. This performance drop was the result of filling the drive and emptying it three times.

This poor performance wouldn’t be a problem if the price was cheaper. R800 separates this drive from Kingston’s flagship HyperX 240GB SSD. The HyperX drive will break 500MB/s in both sequential read and write tests and that is terrible news for the V200. Had the V200 been R1,000 cheaper it may have been a worthwhile purchase for those needing a large SSD as a boot drive on a budget. However since it is priced so close to the HyperX it is impossible to recommend the V200 over saving a little extra before buying the high-performance sibling instead.