Although Kingston hasn't made as big of a name for itself in the high-cease SSD market place as Intel and OCZ have, the company has remained highly competitive past focusing on the upkeep segment. Although its oft-used Toshiba controllers take modest read and write speeds of around 200MB/southward, the Kingston SSDNow V+ range delivers surprisingly strong and affordable functioning. On that particular drive Windows vii boot times are surprisingly fast, plus the low ability consumption ways y'all should get a piffling more life out of mobile devices.

While Kingston has been content with Toshiba's controllers, it seems like everyone else jumped aboard the SandForce limited. The SandForce SF-1200 (1222) controller was a large hit, with the shortlist of SSDs using it includes the ADATA S599, Corsair Force, Thou.Skill Phoenix, Mushkin Callisto, OCZ Vertex ii, Super Talent FT, Patriot Inferno, and Team Group Xtreem-S1. There were many others, but yous get the betoken.

Furthermore, manufacturers didn't stop at a single SF-1200-based SSD. For example, OCZ released numerous iterations with the same SandForce chip, including the Vertex 2, Agility 2, Onyx 2 and RevoDrive. Having accumulated such a following, SandForce didn't hesitate to deliver its side by side serial of flash bulldoze controllers.

First demonstrated by OCZ's Vertex 3, the new SandForce SF-2200 (SF-2281) controller offers incredible read and write functioning of over 500MB/s. Unfortunately, Toshiba has withal to produce a competing solution, so Kingston has adhered to the one-time aphorism "if y'all can't beat 'em, bring together 'em."

Kingston'southward new HyperX SSD range comes four months after we reviewed Vertex 3, so it might seem like the company is a bit tardy. However, its late arrival could bear witness benign when you consider the firmware issues others have been experiencing.

Firmware is a major correspondent to the speed of SSDs and this has been a large selling point of the OCZ drives, also as Intel's. That said, OCZ has had a fair amount of trouble with the second-gen SandForce controllers, as users report diverse errors including BSODs when running Windows. While OCZ and other SandForce partners who released early SF-2281 products have been working hard to correct these issues, it certainly makes you question their reliability. Corsair even had to recall a faulty batch of their Strength SSDs.

By sitting on the sidelines, Kingston has been afforded the luxury of refining its firmware. The company says information technology's spent fourth dimension ironing out the bugs in order to bring a stable and high performing product to market. Information technology also claims that the HyperX range has undergone extended rigorous testing and qualifications. With that in mind, information technology's but off-white to believe Kingston'southward latest addition volition be a stone solid representation of the SandForce SF-2200 controller. Let'southward press on hither and see if the HyperX can live up to that expectation.