Kingston NV2 1TB SSD Review

Rating: 7.5.

Kingston's NV2 is an entry-level Gen 4 SSD with a DRAM-less design. It uses a four-channel controller and 144-layer QLC NAND, helping it to come in at under £50 for the 1TB model here in the UK. What sort of performance do you get for the money? We find out today.

Kingston's NV2 drive is available in four capacities; 250GB, 500GB, 1TB (the drive we are reviewing) and the 2TB flagship drive. At the heart of the drive is a Silicon Motion SM2267XT 4-channel controller. It's a DRAM-less design, using Host Memory Buffer technology instead.

Kingston only supplies Sequential read/write figures in the specification sheet for the drive. The 250GB drive gets a read rating of up to 3,000MB/s with writes rated up to 1,300MB/s. The 500GB and the 1TB drives have the same up to 3,500MB/s for reads and up to 2,100MB/s for writes. The 2TB drive has the same read speed as the 500GB and 1TB drives but with an uprated 2,800MB/s for write performance.

Kingston quotes a TBW endurance figure for the 1TB drives as 320TB. The 2TB model gets a rating of 640TB, the 500GB drive, 160TB and the 250GB drive 80TB. Kingston back the drive with a 3-year warranty which is a bit mean these days when 5-year warranties are usually the norm.

Physical Specifications:

• Usable Capacities: 1TB.
• NAND Components: 144-layer QLC NAND.
• NAND Controller: Silicon Motion SM2267XT.
• Cache: None – (HMB) Host Memory Buffer.
• Interface: PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe.
• Form Factor: M2 2280.
• Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.2mm.
• Drive Weight: 7g.

Firmware Version: SBM02103.

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