Kingston Hyper X 240GB SSD Review

Conclusion

They say a picture paints a thousand words. So how many does this paint?

Back at the start we wondered if the decision to put the highly respected Hyper X brand onto an SSD, especially when they hadn’t done so even with their speedy SSD Now V+ drives, would diminish the Hyper X or if the confidence of Kingston was well placed.

Unquestionably the faith and wisdom of Kingston is well placed. The Hyper X SSD absolutely demolished everything that has come before it, and everything we could put in front of it.

So many drives sacrifice their write performance on the altar of absolute read speed because the public love those gaudy numbers. The Hyper X though with its combination of SandForce controller and 25nm Intel MLC NAND has mind-blowingly big read speeds, but still keeps the write speed high. Perhaps even more impressive is how the speeds remain so consistent. Often at the bleeding edge of technological capability there are tests that highlight weaknesses, or don’t allow something to perform to its full capacity. The Kingston Hyper X, if anything, became even more jaw-dropping the deeper into testing we moved.

Synthetic benchmarks normally give us the shouty numbers that are kicked into touch once the real world stuff kicks in. Yet the Hyper X was even more impressive in PC Mark Vantage than it was in something like Crystal Disk Mark. And it was damn impressive in that.

Yes of course there is a steep price to pay for this speed. Around £400 for the 240GB model on test today. But this isn’t a product for the everyman. This is shamelessly elitist. It’s for the most demanding user. Those who absolutely must have no compromise whatsoever. You wouldn’t put chip pan fat in your Audi R8 TDi, so why settle for an average drive in your HexCore i7 system? The Kingston Hyper X SSD redefines fast. Anything that can make a RAID Velociraptor, or SSD Now V+ setup look positively sluggish and lumpen gets out vote. Indeed the performance is so astonishing that £400 is almost cheap, especially when compared to other large capacity SSDs.

With Trim and garbage collection support, great packaging, fabulous looks and speed to burn, the Kingston Hyper X SSD is not only worthy of the Hyper X branding, but our OC3D Gold Award too.

     

Thanks to Kingston for providing the Hyper X SSD for review. Discuss in our forums.