The Most Popular Budget SSD - Kingston A400 Review

In a previous video, I reviewed some of the cheapest SSDs on Amazon, but my Kingston A400 was dead on arrival. So I decided to order another and do some testing.

Link to results:

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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:41 The Kingston A400
1:30 The Tests
2:08 Disclaimer
2:53 Crystal Disk Mark Results
4:06 Windows Boot Time
4:32 Crystal Disk Mark "Full" Results
5:04 Final Thoughts..?
5:28 Retesting SU800 and A400
6:02 Results
8:17 Actual Final Thoughts
9:05 Ending
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Music (in order):
"Hardware Haven Theme" - Me
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[poromise]

I have previously made the mistake of buying an A400 over other similarly priced drives, simply because I trusted the brand. Good to know the AData is the go-to if I need more cheap drives.

[DakOrks]

I used an A400 in a Core 2 duo laptop that was limited to SATA 1 so I wasn't worried about top performance. It was great in that system and is still running years later after being moved around to a few systems.

[kunaalharidas]

Great review man. You should take a look at the Patriot Burst and Burst Elite as well. Apparently, they even have dram cache for the about the same price (at least here in my country). Keep up with the great content.

[mclarenfgtr]

Drive is ok for installing OS and some essential programs like browser, office and other applications. Basically the drive will be mostly for reading than writing and system speed. Decent to pair it with a cheap 1TB HDD for all your storage needs at an affordable price.

[IgnacioEsteves]

Great job man! Lots of budget PC videos but never seen content like yours!

[izzy]

Thanks! I was waiting for this update, the KingstonA400 is the only SSD I've ever used so far it's been going strong for 5 years. For the price I'm more than happy with it as a boot drive, but when it eventually fails I know to look towards the Adata, I'd never heard of Adata when purchasing my drive so the brand recognition of kingston 100% swayed my choice.

[ntgm]

Thanks coming back and including the Kingston! The few I have work well, but seeing it up against the Adata is very interesting indeed.

[TheJocadasa]

On top of everything, *the Kingston A400 240GB has a measly-rated endurance of 80TB* ... Whereas the SU800's rated endurance is 200TB.

[icarus]

There is one major weakness of the a400 that not that many people talk about. The write endurance. I have no idea what kind of flash storage that Kingston use but the write endurance are much lower than most other drive. The 120GB a400 only have write endurance of 40TBW. That means if I use that drive, it'll probably fail after 3 or 4 years of use. For comparison the silicone power TBW for the 128GB version is 65TB. That's over 50% better. So I'll avoid Kingstone ssd for now. (Their entire ssd lineup seems to have low endurance too)

[CiberBago]

Maybe I'm unlucky but out of the 120+ ssd we have bought for the company I work for... like 5 of them have been Adata. 3 of them have failed and 0 of the kingston. And reading reviews... is more common for them to fail too. So... I'll stick with kingston, but good review!

[foxyloon]

Really glad I went the the AData drive! Ended up picking that one when I saw that it was the only option, within that price range, that had DRAM cache. Was considering the Kingston A400 at the time, but really glad I didn't pick that one.

[studiosnch]

I actually use the 480GB version of the A400, but as a tertiary mirror to my work-related files (which are on a thumb drive 24/7 plugged into my computer, which is mirrored to an offsite backup, to my other computer, to my office-issue hard drive, and to the said A400). It would have been better for me to have seen this video before having bought that drive, but with limited choices in my local computer shop (they sell WD, Samsung, Seagate, and Kingston drives), I bought this one as I was just looking for more space and not R/W speeds.

But I would go for the ADATA to be honest if only it's sold here.

And before you cancel me on the comments, I have several SSDs from WD and Samsung where most of my more important files (video projects, photos, music project files) are saved; the office-issued WD hard drive serves as the main project drive for work. Which means that if the Kingston drive becomes Kings-done, I'm somehow alright from the fallout.

[majoryoshi]

I've been buying PNY CS100 (iirc that's the model) for my servers where the boot drive size doesn't really matter, just needs to have a reasonable startup speed and can handle being powered on and read from for extended periods of time. It was the cheapest I could find at best buy when I got the first one when I was experimenting with RAID configurations and now it's become a fairly reliable drive.

[eduardblackbeard]

Thanks for these videos, I have looked at all these ssds online or at stores. Managed to find the Silicon Power at 1TB for a better price than any of the other drives on the list and feel pretty decent.

[Miguel-osjp]

You gained my like with the kings done

[relaxingnature]

We've used the Kingston 120 and 240 heavily to carry large files back and forth ..filled and spilled hundreds of times and they both still work perfect ..wont be fast as a os drive because of no dram but as a portable drive they are great

[KanoValentine]

Nice video, exactly what I'm looking for.

My office PC uses a 240GB Kingston A400 and I've been using it heavily as a download machine for more than a year. After using it for about a month, I've brought three Kingston A400 for personal use. 1TB for my main unit and used it for a year so far so good. The other two I brought to bring new life into two of my 5 year old Acer laptops.

Honest opinion, it slows down a lot when playing games while transferring (any)files in the background OR if a pesky windows update slips through. Not sure about the reliability but I hope it will outlast what it advertises... (was always a 7.2k HDD user until it died 6 years later). Only after I brought the 1TB I knew that it didn't have any DRAM (lol) but the price difference to jump to a DRAM SSD is just too high, like about 30usd more where I live.

[myriadtechrepair]

I've installed dozens of these, never had a DOA, and never had one fail yet. It's reliable.

[tonyperez]

Thanks for the video. I use Samsung, WD, Sandisk and kingston, in the companie's computers but No SP or Adata. 5 years ago I used a SP for a new build and data would be corrupted on and off. It finally died after the warranty expired. Adata was a DOA.

[midothebeast]

For me it was more about the warranty. Kingston warranty in Egypt is 3 years and Adata/hikvision/WD ssds are 1 year. Since I already have a Hikvision SSD failing right on the 369th day, I was attracted to the long warranty that Kingston ssds had and bought 2 (240gb for my pc and 120gb for my laptop)