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The latest drive to join Kingston's extensive range of external devices is the XS1000. A tiny pocket-sized drive, it uses a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface and offers transfer speeds up to 1,050MB/s. We test the 2TB model, coming in at just over £100 here in the UK.
Available at launch in 1TB and 2TB capacities, the latter of which we are reviewing today, the XS1000 uses a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller and 3D NAND. The SM2320 uses a built-in USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 interface (running at x1 in the XS1000) which offers much better performance than a controller that has to rely on a bridge chip. Another benefit of not using a bridge chip is that drive designers don't have to find space to accommodate it, allowing for more compact drives like the XS1000.
Kingston rates the read/write performance for the drive as up to 1,050MB/s and up to 1,000MB/s respectively for both capacities.
The XS1000 doesn't come with any hardware encryption or IP protection rating. Kingston back the XS1000 with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: Silicon Motion SM2320.
- Interface: USB 3.2 Gen2 x1.
- Form Factor: external.
- Dimensions: 69.54 x 32.58 x 13.5mm.
- Drive Weight: 30g.
Firmware Version: 1000.
Kingston's XS1000 comes in a box that is a number of times bigger than the drive itself. To give you an idea of how small the drive is, the image on the front is its actual size. At the top right-hand side of the box is a sticker with the capacity of the drive on it, and between this and the image of the drive is a line of text stating that it uses a USB-C / USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface.
The rear of the box has the box contents listed at the top, in this case just a USB-C to USB-A cable. Under this are some multi-lingual marketing and warranty notes.
The XS1000 is constructed from aluminium and hard plastic, measures just 69.54 x 32.58 x 13.5mm and weighs in at 30g. Internally the drive uses a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller and 3D TLC NAND. Silicon Motion's SM2320 is a single-core, four-channel solution that has a built-in USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 (20Gb/s) interface, although in the XS1000 it's only running at 3.2 Gen 2 x1 (10Gb/s) speeds.
The controller supports up to 4TB of 3D TLC/QLC NAND at speeds of up to 2,100MB/s and 2,000MB/s for reads and writes respectively when in USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 mode. The SM2320 also supports AES 256-bit encryption, TCG Opal 2.0 compliance and auxiliary Fingerprint Security support but Kingston hasn't taken advantage of any of these security features with the XS1000. With its built-in USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 interface, the controller allows for smaller format drives like the XS1000 to be built as there isn't a separate bridge chip taking up space on the PCB.
The XS1000 uses a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x1 USB-C port, next to which is a blue LED drive activity light.
The drive came pre-formatted as exFAT, so to run some of our benchmarks we re-formatted to drive to NTFS.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using V7.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read-and-write tests, as well as random read-and-write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
Kingston rates the XS1000 at up to 1,050MB/s and up to 1,000MB/s for Sequential reads and writes respectively. Using the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark we could confirm the read figure with a test result of 1,030MB/s (using the default test and Peak Performance profile test, both using QD8 T1 settings). The best write result we saw of 932MB/s (default-test) is a bit further back from the official maximum of 1,000MB/s.
Kingston rates the Sequential performance of the 2TB XS1000 as up to 1,050MB/s for reads and up to 1,000MB/s for writes. In our throughput tests, the drive didn't quite hit those official maximums with a tested best-read figure of 952.33MB/s (8MB) with writes at 875.93MB/s (8MB). Although the tested read/write figures are shy of the official ratings, the drive still offers strong performance.
In the read-throughput test, the drive peaked at the 8MB block mark at 952.53MB/s before dropping back slightly to finish the test run at 945.04MB/s.
In the write throughput test, the Kingston XS1000 peaked at the same 8MB mark as the read test, with a figure of 875.93MB/s. Again this was short of the official maximum figure.
The PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark has been designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices.
The Data Drive Benchmark uses 3 traces, running 3 passes with each trace:
Trace 1. Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, into the target drive (write test).
Trace 2. Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
Trace 3. Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test)
Here we show the total bandwidth performance for each of the individual traces.
The XS1000 does pretty well in PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark sitting in a mid-table position all of the tests.
To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 2TB Seagate FireCuda 510.
Transfer Details:
- Windows 10 backup – 118GB.
- Data file – 100GB.
- BluRay Movie – 42GB.
- Windows 11 iso – 5.4GB.
- File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
- Steam folder – 222GB (8 games: Alien Isolation, Battlefield 4, BioShock Infinite, Crysis 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Shadow Of Mordor, Skyrim, The Witcher3 Wild Hunt).
- Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
- Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
- Movie folder – 12GB – 15 files – (8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
- Photo Folder – 10GB – 304 files – (171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
- Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
- Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
- 3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
- AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
The XS1000 handled our real-life file transfers without any problems. The drive averaged 736MB/s in write mode for the 14 transfers, the fastest being the 936MB/s for the 100GB data file.
As for reads it averaged 932MB/s with the fastest speed being the 1,031MB/s produced by the 100GB Data file, 4K Movie Clips folder and the 5GB image transfers. The slowest transfer was, as usual in this test the 50GB File folder at 304MB/s for reads and 278MB/s for writes.
We also tested the time it took to import and export a mix of files from/to the XS1000 into various programs.
The programmes we used were:
- Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint)
- Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Adobe Photoshop
- VideoPad
- Audacity
We also timed backing up a Win 10 installation onto the XS1000.
Kingston's XS1000 shows strong performance for the load / save tests. The 8m 26s time for the complete Windows 10 backup (100GB) procedure was impressive for an external drive.
Just like its faster sibling, the XS2000, Kingston's latest external SSD, the XS1000 is tiny. Never mind pocket-sized, at just 69.54 x 32.58 x 13.5mm and weighing in at a mere 30g (thanks to its metal and plastic construction), it's small enough and light enough to get lost in a pocket. At the time of writing, just two capacities make up the XS1000 product line, 1TB and 2TB, the latter model we are reviewing here.
The drive is built around a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller and 3D TLC NAND. Kingston hasn't stated how many layers the NAND has on the spec sheet but a good guess might be that it's the same 96-layer 3D TLC NAND used by the XS2000. Silicon Motion's SM2320 controller makes tiny drives like the XS1000 possible as it has a built-in USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 interface, so there is no bridge chip taking up space. The other plus point with the SM2320 is that by doing away with the bridge chip it brings much better performance. Although the 4-channel controller can run at USB 3.2 Gen 2 X2 speeds (20Gb/s), the XS1000 is only running at USB 3.2 Gen 2 X1 speed (10Gb/s). The SM2320 also supports AES 256-bit encryption, but Kingston hasn't taken advantage of this feature with the XS1000.
Kingston rates the XS1000 at up to 1,050MB/s for Sequential reads and up to 1,000MB/s for writes. With the ATTO and ASSSD benchmarks, we couldn't get that close to the official maximums, but with CrystalDiskMark 8 we got much closer. The best-read figure we saw from the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark was 1,030MB/s (using the default test and Peak Performance profile test, both using QD8 T1 settings) while the best-write figure we got was 932MB/s (default test, QD8 T1).
With our real-life file transfer tests, the read performance was very consistent when dealing with large transfers, with ten out of the fourteen transfers topping 1GB/s, ranging from 1,011MB/s up to 1,031MB/s. Overall the drive averaged 932MB/s for the fourteen tests, with the fastest transfers being the 100GB Data file, 4K Movie Clips folder and the 5GB image transfers at 1,031MB/s with the slowest being the 50GB file folder at 304MB/s. Writes averaged out at 736MB/s for the fourteen tests, the fastest was once again the 100GB Data file at 936MB/s with the 50GB file folder again slowest at 278MB/s.
The XS1000 doesn't come with any hardware encryption (which may put off potential business users), nor does it have an IP protection rating but it is backed with a 5-year warranty.
We found the 2TB Kingston XS1000 for £106.99 on Kingston's site HERE. Kingston also sent us retail links for Ebuyer and Box, with pricing around £106.49.
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Pros
- Overall Performance.
- Diminutive size.
Cons
- Lacks hardware encryption.
- No IP rating.
KitGuru says: Another tiny, pocket-sized drive from Kingston mixing portability with strong performance, especially when it comes to reads.
