We have in our labs Kingston's latest solid-state drives (SSDs) for PCs and laptops, the SSDNow V300 Series. Designed to replace the existing SSDNow V200 models, the V300 should offer sequential read and write speeds of around 450MB/s - somewhere between five and 10 times faster than a traditional...

As is typical for the SandForce (LSI) drives, the Kingston V300 120GB drive has ~7% overprovisioning that offers the user 111GB of usable space. If you were to purchase the 240Gb version, you'd find yourself with 223GB.

The Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB solid state drive covered in this review has a respectable capacity of 120GB. Although marketed as a "notebook bundle kit," this SSD will perform just the same in either a desktop or notebook environment.

With compressible data this drive exceeded its rated read and write transfer speeds by 50MB/s; Win7 loading time of 23 seconds with an overclocked i5 2500k; Fair pricing; at less than $1/GB; Included Acronis disk cloning software is very effective and simple to use

Poor; but expected sequential read/write performance with incompressible data

The Kingston SSDNow V300 is yet another value-oriented SSD in Kingston's wildly successful line of mainstream solid state drives. With the pressures of TLC SSDs squeezing the value market we take a look and see if a standard MLC SSD with 19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND and an SF-2281 processor can keep up...

As the world's largest independent manufacturer of memory products, Kingston Technology doesn't need much of an introduction. The company got its start in 1987, when the computer industry was suffering from a severe shortage of surface-mount memory chips.

Available in 60GB; 120GB and 240GB capacities; SandForce SF-2281 processor; Toggle Mode NAND flash; Excellent sequential read and write speeds; SATA 6Gb/s interface; Supports SMART; TRIM and Garbage Collection; Available as stand-alone drive or as part of an upgrade kit; Well constructed design,...

Not as fast when writing incompressible data

This must be a frustrating time for any manufacturer producing SSDs with the SandForce controller. You're sat waiting for the next generation of controller while Marvell, OCZ and Samsung gleefully launch their own to entice the market.

Looking for an affordable SSD but demand a high-performance controller? Kingston's SSD

The 120GB Kingston SSDNow V300 Series internal solid-state drive (SSD) is priced to appeal to ordinary consumers at £75, but it boasts a level of performance that sat at the top of the enthusiast's market not so long ago.

Impressive performance; Great price; Upgrade bundle is also cheap; Three year warranty

Write speeds not as strong

The 120GB Kingston SSDNow V300 Series SV300S3D7 internal solid-state drive (SSD) is priced to appeal to ordinary consumers but with performance that sat at the top of the enthusiasts market not so long ago.

Great price/performance ratio; Priced well below $1 per GB

Older SF-2181 loses speed in random read/writes; or when working with uncompressed data

Ahh, biased figures. I am rather tempted to say that the Kingston SSDNow V300 120GFB is slow, because it is rated at 'only' 450MB/s read, 450MB/s write, and 85,000 IOPS by the manufacturer -- but what gives?