Kingston 256GB SSDNow V+ Series SSD Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

Capacity

When it comes to storage capacity, the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 256GB SSD has a free capacity of 238GB as shown above. This should be enough for many consumers and is ideal for laptop and netbook users who can only use one drive in their system.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The Kingston SSDNow V+ Series of SSDs performed nearly twice as fast as the original Kingston SSDNow V series and also happens to be available in larger capacities, which is key for the advancement of SSDs in the market. The Kingston SSDNow V+ was said to have sequential read speeds of up to 220MB/sec. and write speeds of up to 180MB/sec. We were able to come very close to those read speeds and were actually able to get slightly faster write speeds in some of the benchmarks. This is clearly a quick drive and performed on par with the Corsair P256 and OCZ Summit 120GB as both of those competitors’ drives feature the same internal components.

When it comes to pricing, the Kingston SSDNow V+ Series DNV225-S2/256GB retails for $699.00 shipped. The drive is the same as the Corsair P256 CMFSSD-256GBG2D SSD, which is currently on sale for $15 off at $684.00 shipped. So, you can see that the drives are priced identically when one of them is not on sale. This is good news as the drives are pretty much identical and the only real difference is in the appearance of the case and who you warranty the drive with. That choice is ultimately up to you, but either way you should be safe!

The only negative to this drive is that it does not currently support the TRIM features found on Microsoft Windows 7 with firmware versions VBM18C1Q and earlier. Future firmware versions with TRIM support will be made available as they are released by Samsung (the manufacturer of the controller IC). If you currently own a Kingston SSDNow V+ Series drive and have lost some performance it is possible to restore the performance of the drive by performing a secure-erase of the SSD using the DOS utility called Secure Erase. This will also permanently delete any data stored on the SSD, but it will restore the performance back to roughly the day you bought it. This should hold power users over until a proper TRIM supporting firmware is released. Now that Windows 7 has come out we can only expect that to happen sooner rather than later. Currently, Samsung has not made updated firmware and software utilities available to end-users. When Samsung releases new firmware versions and software utilities, they will be made available to the public.

Legit Bottom Line: The Kingston SSDNow V+ Series of SSDs was found to be twice as fast as the original V Series and is a solid performing mainstream drive that comes in capacities of up to 256GB!