Kingston’s latest SSD release is the SSDNow V200 that is aimed at the cost-conscious, performance-minded user. Offered as a desktop or laptop bundle the SSDNow V200 includes cloning software and a DVD with step-by-step installation video.

The SSDNow V200 uses a JMicron 668 Controller with Toshiba 24nm 3K P/E Cycle MLC NAND. While not the acclaimed Sandforce controller, the JMicron 668 does help the SSDNow V200 run at advertised read speeds between 260 and 300 MB/s using SATA 3.0 and write speeds of 100 to 230 MB/s depending on the drive capacity. The larger SSDs seem to have the faster speeds.

Initially when this SSD hit the market a firmware issue hampered its performance. This has since been resolved with a firmware upgrade and now all seems well with the SSDNow V200 drives. In fact the random read and write IOPS performance have improved with the write IOPS increasing 136% and 129% for the 128GB while read IOPS increased 22% for the 64GB and 5% for the 128GB. Currently the most recent versions of these drives will already have the faster firmware preinstalled.