Kingston SSDNow V 40GB

Introduction

The biggest obstacle to mainstreaming SSD's has been price per gigabyte and overall cost of individual SSD's. Leave it to Kingston to break the price barrier and deliver a 40GB Kingston SSDNow for a measly $115 (Before MIR). Not only are they delivering a $115 SSD, they are delivering an Intel controller and Intel Nand flash SSD.

You can reach up and close your mouth now, yes it's a $115 SSD with an Intel controller and Nand flash in it. Not only that, it's also not the old 45nm SSD rehashed for Kingston, it's the new 34nm design with a totally new Intel controller that offers marginally better performance than the uber expensive (at launch) Intel X25-M. At launch the Intel X25-M was running in the $600 - $800 range for an 80GB MLC SSD. Short months later you can get a better drive, with 40GB capacity for $115, take the $115 times two and you get the same capacity for $230 pre MIR, after MIR (At Launch) the total cost for 80GB would run a measly $170.

Maybe it's time to change the way we think about SSD's and have a Kingston SSDNow V 40GB boot drive and a secondary platter drive for storage and large programs. All the speed and benefits of an SSD and plenty of inexpensive storage on the backup platter drive.

With the Intel controller and Nand flash it would have been more appropriate to call this drive the Kingston SSDNow M series but based on the price, it's a value drive. We're ok with value drives as long as they provide the blazing speed we demand.