They Didn't Want Me to Review This - So I Bought It Instead

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Timestamps:
0:00​ - Introduction
0:42 - Kingston NV2 Overview
2:22 - Performance in Light Use (For use as a secondary drive)
3:24​ - Performance in Heavier Use (OS Drive, Video Editors, etc)
4:09 - Latency
4:18 - Performance in Extreme Use (Stress Test)
5:00 - Gaming Performance
5:30 - Techtesters SSD Gaming Performance Ranking
6:00 - Sequential Performance & Playstation 5 Use
6:57 - Thermal Performance
7:40 - Pricing & Final Thoughts

Disclosure:
- Amazon links I provide are (typically) affiliate links. Using these does not cost you anything at all. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means they do provide me with a small commission when you decide to buy a product, at no cost to you.

#Kingston #NV2 #SSD

[GabrielNica]

I bought the 1TB version and at that moment it was cheaper than the cheapest SATA drive.

[stuartthurstan]

Bought a 2tb version of this to use as a games drive. After watching several tech videos where they tested real world performance and concluded that in games there is very little difference between the fastest and slowest NVMe drives I decided that I wanted the most capacity at the lowest cost. This drive definitely filled that criteria, whilst actually not performing too badly.

[Felttipfuzzywuzzyflyguy]

That's really funny they didn't want to send you one, it's awesome that you bought one anyway to review it on your own. Thank you!

[pascaldifolco]

Your SSD reviews are something else, really original and high quality, thanks !

[kellervater]

Bought the 2TB version half a year ago, because it were the actual cheapest 2TB nvme on the market. I needed a fast drive as video cache for video editing. Since this isn't any kind of crucial use-case I also don't mind if it fails.

[bgeneto]

I like the way you explain the applicability of each test/benchmark. it's common to see buyers choosing SSD based on sequential read and write values ​​alone.

[charminbaer]

I'm a photographer, I currently have 2 OWC Thunderbay 4 RAID drives, 4TB each. One is a Thunderbay 4 Mini, with 4 x 1TB 2.5" SSDs, the other has 4x 1TB HDDs. The Mini with SSDs I use as my main external storage for my Lightroom library, and the other RAID is a backup of that main one. I'm about to run out of storage, so I was looking at upgrading both of my RAID drives, when I found the Kingston NV2 2TB at $99 each. That's pretty damn cheap, almost as cheap or cheaper than some 2.5" SATA SSDs, whilst having better performance. At this price, I would get 4 of these NV2 drives and put them in a RAID enclosure like the ones from OWC. I'll then upgrade the 2.5" SSDs to 2TB each, and sell my larger Thunderbay 4 with 3.5" HDD.

[ShinyHelmet]

I've purchased one of these based on your review. Yeah it's cheap and crappy compared to other NVME's, but it'll make a decent upgrade to my gaming drive, which is currently a 1tb mechanical HDD. Keep up the good work. 👍

[sheldonkupa]

Very good and balanced analysis. I got 2 of them, and they are close to 50 degree celsius while not used as boot drive a while after i start up the computer. Even mosfets are at 30 degrees. That means they use a lot of power while idle. But for my usecase they perform reasonably well. The Crucial nvmes i use just are at least 20 degrees cooler.

[taramjwi]

I considered this one for a budget build I was helping with but went with an on sale p3 plus 1TB ($55) instead. Thanks for the thorough review!

[palmariusbjrnstad]

Great initiative to go buy one even if they wouldn't send a test sample! I like that you covered the vague specs in the start- and maybe this deserves a reminder for everyone: Your NV2 and my NV2 may perform very differently, because they can put any old flash chips (and even controllers) as long as it satisfies those specs. That said, I have one, and in reality it's pretty similar to the reviewed one.

[el_tio_apoca]

Nice review, another thing someone should consider about kingston drives is that they last more than the advertised on their ssd's, so even if they are selling pcie gen 3 speeds the average consumer isn't going to notice it as they are already really fast at a competitive price, basically around normal ssd's price but on nvme factor.

[JMatrx]

They didn't want to send a sample because at launch they advertised it as having a TLC dramless design.. but then they slipped in QLC silently as far as I know without changing the part number.

It has a mapping table enabled controller (as SN 570/770, Adata Atom, P3/P3+ and probably also the vanilla 980 I believe).
In TLC fashion it performed okayish, in QLC is kinda meh, once the SLC cache is exhausted I saw it bogging down below 100mb/s on some reddit posts..

.. so okayish for a data storage/game folder drive. Not for writing down shadowplay recordings and I'd not use it as a single Windows OS/Mixed data usage. I fear Windows I/O may hammer the SLC cache as any other similar drive.

[klopferator]

Bought two of them (500GB), so far no problems. One thing to note regarding the video: It's easy to say "you should buy an SSD with DRAM", but the shops (and often the manufacturers) don't have this information readily available. When I look at Amazon, the only way I know that the Samsung 980 Pro is supposed to have DRAM is because one of the fancy CG images shows a chip labelled "DRAM", but it's not mentioned elsewhere.

[p_mouse]

What's always so "wrong" with getting something affordable? If it fits the purpose, why wasting more money on it?

[magoid]

I got the 2TB version in the last Black Friday in November. Works fine for my needs and it was priced in the range of some 1TB offerings, so it was a no-brainer to take it. There was better performance ones? Sure. But I was in need of the capacity, and its performance was a big jump from the ancient Samsung 840 EVO SATA SSD I was using at the time.

[longplaylegends]

All in all, this is actually a great deal for MUCH better than SATA performance, at like half the price of other drives with the same capacity. I think I'm going for a 2TB on one of these. Just seems awfully good to pass up, and I run plenty of games from SATA SSD's that this will outperform anyway, and those almost always work just fine regardless.

[maxview]

This is exactly what I need for a second game drive. Thanks for the review!

[Bajicoy]

Super useful review to see how close a cheap gen 4 and a better quality gen 3 drive are. I really like seeing how cheaper drives compare to the more expensive ones. I recently got a 4tb teamgroup mp34 gen 3 drive as an upgrade to my saberent rocket 1TB gen 3 drive. I spent $120 back in 2019 so it was really cool to see the 4TB drive almost got to $200. Maybe not the fastest drive but fast enough for CAD and games.

I did not realize the lower capacity drives reduced speeds so much so thank you for explaining the recommendation that 500GB is a good minimum moving forward!

[michaelthompson]

I got the 2TB model here in Australia 🇦🇺 about 2months ago for roughly $98USD plus local taxes (10% GST) and it’s been a great drive for my photos and extended games library 💪👍🥰. When I first saw the specs of this drive I immediately said it’s a Gen 3 drive (NOT 4 as stated) but it’s performance value for its uses Is exemplary and I would recommend this drive).