Kingston NV2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 2TB Review

The Kingston NV2 is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD that brings performance and reliability at a very attractive price point.

We’ve reviewed plenty of storage solutions by Kingston over the years, but we unfortunately missed out on the company’s NV1 SSD when it came out about two years ago. Fast forward to today and we’re blessed with a follow up to that in the form of the Kingston NV2, a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD that brings performance and reliability at a very attractive price point. Let's see how it fares today.

Kingston NV2 Technical Specifications

Form Factor	M.2 2280
Interface	PCIe 4.0 NVMe
Capacities	250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB
Weight	7g (All capacities)
Controller	Phison E18
NAND	3D TLC
Sequential read/write	250GB – 3,000/1,300MB/s 500GB – 3,500/2,100MB/s 1TB – 3,500/2,100MB/s 2TB – 3,500/2,800MB/s
Total Bytes Written	250GB – 80TB 500GB – 160TB 1TB – 320TB 2TB – 640TB
Price and Warranty	Php1,598 (250GB)  Php2,448 (500GB) Php4,890 (1TB) Php8,230 (2TB) (Prices at the time of writing, links are non-affiliate) Limited 3-year warranty with free technical support

 

PACKAGING AND DESIGN

This is the blister packaging that we’ve seen across Kingston’s SSDs that they usually ship with. It’s good and all but at this point we’d prefer a carton box over it now for better storing, especially when you’re upgrading. 

Also important to note, the plastic shell doesn’t have any interlocking mechanism for a more secure unboxing (unwrapping?). So do be careful when you’re taking it out of its packaging.

There’s no hidden Acronis serial key here as well. It would be nice and all, but not everyone will use it. Maybe somehow this is one of the ways to cut the overall cost, too. So there’s that to be thankful for. What we do want to see bundled with M.2 SSDs are screws for it. To be honest, M.2 screws are too small and they sometimes disappear into oblivion whenever you miss the threads and your screwdriver isn’t magnetic. Happened to me a couple of times already now. 

Here’s a look up close the NV2 SSD. It uses the standard M.2 2280 form factor. There’s no chunky heat spreaders here or at least something similar like what we saw with Kingston’s graphene aluminum sheet on the FURY Renegade. Still not too much of a concern or a necessity performance-wise as operations are fine during our use cases. Plus if your motherboard already has a built-in M.2 heat spreader, there won’t be any clearance issues and you get to keep the theme you’re going for. The importance of aesthetics and all that.

PERFORMANCE

The Kingston NV2 is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, but it’s still backwards compatible with Gen 3 hardware. For performance, Kingston indicates that it’s rated 3,500MB/s read and 2,800 write speeds. We’re testing this one on rig with a Ryzen 5 3600X on an NZXT N7 B550 motherboard and 16GB of DDR4 3600MHz RAM.

Test System Setup

Motherboard	NZXT N7 B550
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU	COLORFUL iGame GeForce GTX 1080 Vulcan X OC
RAM	Kingston FURY Beast Special Edition 16GB DDR4 @3600MHz
Storage	Kingston NV2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 2TB + Plextor M9Pe(G) 512GB
Cooler	NZXT Z63 240mm AIO
PSU	CORSAIR RM750 80 Plus Gold
Case	Thermaltake Core P3
OS	Windows 10 Pro
Monitor	ASUS VP249QGR 144Hz 24-inch Monitor

PCMark 10 - Full System Drive Benchmark

PCMark features a full system drive benchmark that utilizes a wide-ranging set of real-world tracer from popular applications and common tasks. 

Crystal Disk Mark

CrystalDiskMark is an open source benchmark software used to measure the transfer speed of different media data storage drives including such as HD, SSD, USB memory, SD card and NAS. SEQ1M Q8T1 is recorded for the comparison.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD tests the sequential or random read/write performance without using the cache. 

Anvil Storage Utilities Benchmark

Anvil Storage Utilities is a benchmark tool that offers its users a simple way of assessing the read and write performance of SSDs and HDDs.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

ATTO Disk Benchmark is an industry leading benchmark that help measure performance of system storage such as hard drives, solid state drives, RAID arrays, and so forth.

Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Benchmark Tool

The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Benchmark Tool is a convenient tool that measures your computer's hardware performance and at the same time also logs the total loading time between runs.

Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition

Final Fantasy XV has very long load times during start up, so we'll be using this opportunity to log the time of drives to boot up the game from the main menu to the start of a new game when the loading screen appears.

CONCLUSION

While the Kingston NV2 doesn’t carry a gaming branding, its numbers speak for itself. And all that for a great price. You can go for the 250GB version for starters for around Php1,600, or take it to the top with the 2TB version at around Php8,200. Comparing that with other gaming SSDs and it’s just so easy to justify its price (do take note performance varies across the product lineup). 

PCIe NVMe SSDs are getting more cheaper, and Kingston has played a huge part in that with new offerings that boast more value. If you’re just about to jump into M.2 SSDs and you really want to move up to faster speeds without the compromise in capacity and the worry in the price point, the Kingston NV2 certainly brings a lot to the table.