Kingston Outs V+200 SSD Series, SandForce 6Gbps Drives Get Cheaper

After releasing the HyperX SSD and the SSDNow KC100, Kingston has now added another SandForce SF-2281 powered solid state drive to its arsenal, the V+200 which targets users in search of a more affordable high-performance SSD.

Until today’s announcement of the V+200, Kingston’s V+ series SSDs were based on Toshiba processors, but since the Japanese company hasn’t so far introduced an SATA 6Gbps controller of its own, Kingston has decided to go with SandForce this round.

According to its maker, the new SSDNow V+200 product range will include five models with capacities ranging from 60GB to 480GB, all of these boasting sequential read speeds of up to 535MB/s.

Kingston estimates sequential writes at a maximum of 480MB/s (460MB/s for the 60GB model), while random 4K read/write performance starts at 75K/34K IOPS in the higher capacity models and goes up to 85K/60K IOPS in the smallest of the five drives.

To reach this speeds, Kingston has paired SandForce’s SF-2281 controller with IMFT 25nm asynchronous NAND that is rated to withstand 3K p/e cycles, so internally the V+200 looks a lot like OCZ's Agility 3.

“Kingston constantly strives to offer the perfect upgrade solution to cover each market segment. The SSDNow V+200 drive has been specifically designed to meet the needs of both business and home users looking for an inexpensive yet powerful upgrade,” said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston.

“The SSDNow V+200 is equipped with all essential tools needed to extend the lifecycle and boost a system’s performance to the maximum.

“The balance between performance and price makes this SSD deliver the best ROI as an upgrade for a fleet of corporate notebooks or desktops or the home PC,” concluded the company’s rep.

Kingston’s SSDNow V+200 drives will be available both as standalone drive and as an upgrade kit (includes cables, brackets, cloning software and a HDD enclosure), with prices starting at $140 (108 EUR) for the 60GB SSD. Going for the upgrade kit adds about $15 (11.57 EUR) to the SSD’s price.