Specifications, Pricing and Availability

Kingston is offering the SSDNow V100 in three capacity points; 64GB, 128GB and 256GB. The original V Series only made it up to 128GB, so the new 100 Series improves upon the first version by doubling the capacity.

The same reason why the capacity has increased is also why the performance has gone up. The new 34nm flash is faster than the V's 43nm and the rated read speed of 250MB/s is 50MB/s faster than the first model. The rated write speeds have also increased from 160MB/s to 230MB/s for the 256GB and 128GB models. The 64GB V100 is rated at the same 250MB/s read speed, but only 145MB/s write speed.

Kingston is offering the V100 in three different retail configurations. The stand alone drive, Notebook Upgrade Bundle and Desktop Upgrade Bundle. All three SKUs have come with a three year warranty, but the Bundle Kits come with accessories like a USB 2.0 enclosure (Notebook) and 2.5" to 3.5" drive brackets (Desktop). The bundle kits also come with Acronis True Image HD drive cloning software that makes cloning your existing drive very easy and allows you to skip the whole Windows install process.

The Kingston V+ 100 256GB we looked at last week is available at Newegg for 599.99 USD and the SSDNow V100 256GB we are looking at today costs 489.99 at the time of writing. Newegg doesn't show any of the SSDNow 256GB drives in stock at the time of writing, but that should change by the time this review is published. We also look for the price to drop when stock is available. Even with a large price drop the Kingston SDDNow V100 has to compete with the now low cost Team SandForce 240GB drives that are now selling for as low as 409 USD and are considered the fastest SATA II (3Gbps) drives on the market.