Kingston SSDNow M-Series SSD Upgrade Kit

Introduction

Back when we reviewed the Kingston X25-M SSDNow Kingston was shipping the drives in the same manner as Intel, a drive in a protective plastic package wrapped in a brown box. Since then the company has given thought to distinguishing their product from the pack and is now shipping a value added retail package. The product simply called the Kingston M-Series Internal SSD Bundled Upgrade Kit is now available at Newegg for 345.00 USD, just 9 Dollars more than the standard M-Series drive we reviewed back in April. Kingston has also released an Upgrade Kit for their 160GB M-Series drive and it is also available from Newegg for 669 USD.

Today we are going to take a look at the new upgrade kit and the additional bits included in the package. Since we have already reviewed the 80GB M-Series SSD Now and found it to be an award winning product, some of the information in this review will be repetitive. But I don't mind as the drive is one of the fastest we have tested to date and it's a pleasure to move focus back on this top notch model.

Let's now take a look at the specifications and see what is included in the new retail package.

Specifications, Availability and Pricing

The specifications for the SSDNow M-Series are identical to the drive we reviewed back in April. When it comes to performance the M-Series is simply the best consumer SSD money can buy. The Indilinx drives give better synthetic performance, but when it comes to real world applications the Intel controller just outperforms everything else on the market today.

The new retail kit comes with several accessories. The largest besides the actual SSD is the 2.5 inch USB drive carrier. You will also find a disk with drive cloning software and instructions on how to easily clone your current drive and then install the new drive back in your system and never skip a beat or need to reinstall your software.

When it comes to cost the upgrade kit is only a few Dollars more than the standard drive package. At 345.00 USD over at Newegg the upgrade kit costs a little more but the USB drive is going to make up the difference whether you need it or not.

The Packaging

I was very surprised to see the retail packaging for the upgrade kit. Usually companies try to spice the package up with logos, pictures and performance information. Here we see that the front of the package looks like the back of many.



On the back we find some warranty information and a Kingston logo at the bottom right.



The product name can only be found on a sticker that is located on the top of the box.



The good news is that everything is packed very well on the inside of the box.

The Kingston SSDNow M-Series Upgrade Kit SSD

The retail kit comes with several accessories. The USB drive carrier is the largest but users looking to mount the 2.5 inch drive in a standard 3.5 inch system will find the drive rails to come in handy. The cloning software is very useful if you don't feel like spending 8 hours installing Windows and your other software.



Here we see the Kingston USB drive carrier.



The carrier features a single USB plug on the side so you can access the drive quickly.



The carrier comes apart very quickly, just use the release button and separate the two halves.



Of course the gem of the kit is the Kingston SSDNow drive that is the fastest consumer drive available.



Enthusiasts have been looking for ways to use the awesome speed of SSDs in their desktop system for quite some time now. The brave has just found a place to set their drive on the bottom of the case, but that is unsecure and a recipe for disaster if you move your system often. Kingston has included rails that will turn your 2.5 inch drive into a 3.5 inch drive, just like your standard desktop drives.

Final Thoughts

The Kingston SSDNow Upgrade Kit is a product whose time has come. Not only does the retail kit make it much easier to install a blazing fast SSD into your desktop in less than 30 minutes with your data migrated over, but it also gives desktop users the option to easily install a traditional notebook sized drive into their desktop.

We have already established that the Kingston SSDNow M-Series drive is the fastest consumer drive on the market. The M-Series is also a great product for RAID 0 desktop users looking for ultimate performance. As it sits right now there isn't a drive, solid state or traditional platter based, that is faster than the Kingston SSDNow M-Series, other than the enterprise E-Series drives.

The price of the upgrade kit is better than expected and comes with a lot of accessories for its additional cost. Honestly, even if you don't need the extra bits you should just lay down the additional 9 Dollars and have them for if and when you will need them.