Kingston a2000 1tb review in Spanish (full analysis)

Kingston A2000 1TB and its 250 and 500 GB versions were already presented at CES 2019, and it is today when we bring you the review of its version with the highest storage capacity, no less than 1TB under the PCIe 3.0 x4 standard. This A2000 series has different controllers, although this time it is Silicon Motion SM2263, while the other versions bring a low-cost Physon to emerge as the cheapest options on the market.

We will see then if quality and price are at a good or excellent level in this 1TB A2000 unit, because we will not accept less in a manufacturer like Kingston.

And, first of all, we thank Kingston for trusting us to give us their product and to make the respective review.

Kingston A2000 1TB technical features

Unboxing

Kington has made life easy on the packaging of this new A2000 series of SSD drives, so it has simply used a hanging plastic case. We understand that it is the cheapest series of PCIe x4 SSD, but man, having used a somewhat more forceful box would not have involved a titanic effort from the brand. This unit costs about 133 euros, which is not enough to come as a battery pack.

In any case, we recognize that it is a fairly hard plastic and that except for catastrophic stomping or the like, the SDD will be considerably safe inside. Mainly thanks to a second inner case it has served as a mold, and it comes along with a card that contains an activation key for the Acronis True Image HD software, which hey, not bad, right?

Design and performance

We have already seen the business card of this Kingston A2000, which has not exactly taken our breath away, so let's go on to review its external appearance. Remember that this A2000 series has been on the market for a while and that it has three versions of 250 GB, 500 Gb and this 1 TB. Long, we recommend the two largest, for offering higher performance at a fairly attractive cost.

As you will have clearly seen in the purchase bundle, we have no trace of any heatsink included, nor of silicone pads. Kingston is pretty sure of their product and that the working temperatures are going to be well below what this unit can handle, and we'll see later that they are quite right. What's more, almost all current boards of Intel and AMD platforms already have some aluminum heatsink included, so it would be redundant to have to pay a higher price for it if we see it from this point of view. I personally would have liked that card of my own .

In fact, the manufacturer clearly tells us that its units are intended to be used for ultrabooks and computers with an ultra-fine form factor like Mini PCs and SFFs. The Kingston A2000's stockings are just 80mm long, 22mm wide and 3.5mm thick, clearly a 2280 size compatible with the vast majority of PCBs.

In any case, the interface used is the usual one, M.2 M-Key with plated contacts for greater conductivity. On the upper side, we find a sticker that covers both the memory chips and the controller, and that shows us all the information about the device. We do not recommend removing this sticker, since we are going to lose the product warranty, but put our noses where they do not call us.

But we are thugs, and we have removed this sticker to see in more detail how the memory chips are distributed. And in total we have 4, which will not be difficult to think that each of them is 256 GB, along with the controller. On the far left we have the crescent slot that is used to fix the Kingston A2000 unit to the motherboard.

And if we turn it around, we have absolutely no chips, just a few electrical tracks and the corresponding coating to avoid static electricity. Note that other drives often have memory chips on the second side as well, so we highly value Kingston's good integration of introducing 1TB on just one side of the SSD. It is impressive at the miniaturization levels that we are reaching.

Hardware and components

With the sticker removed, we realize that the memories that have been mounted on this new SSD are NAND 3D TLC type 96 layers built by Micron, and as we say, 256 GB each. Consequently, it is a 4-channel configuration that also includes a Kingston buffer with a cache function (the chip that is located under the controller). It is a configuration of considerable quality, with more than reliable memories, so Kingston never neglects that of its products.

The controller of this version of 1TB is none other than the Silicon Motion SM2263ENG with four of its eight busy channels. This controller is the successor of the SM2262, widely used in previous ADATA, HP or Intel units, and whose objective is to compete with the Phison E12. The technical data of this controller indicates that it uses the NVMe 1.3 protocol and that it is capable of reaching speeds of 3500/3000 MB / s in sequential reading and writing, of course, everything will depend on the installed memories. In any case, it has a DRAM bus width of 16 or 32 bits depending on the model, and an interface speed of up to 800 MT / s (millions of transfers per second).

Kingston A2000 1TB is a self- encrypting unit with end-to-end data protection using XTS-AES 256-bit, and supports a TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE 1667 management suite. Thanks to this, it is compatible with independent software providers, for example, McAfee, WinMagic, Symantec, etc. In fact, this unit integrates Microsft eDrive for use with BitLocker.

In addition to safety, the most important thing for a user will be the actual speed that the unit can achieve. For the 1 TB specification, we have a sequential read speed of up to 2, 200 MB / s or 250, 000 IOPS, while the sequential write speed is up to 2, 000 MB / s or 220, 000 IOPS. It supports a total of 600 TBW (written TB), it is not a stratospheric figure to be a new generation, but it is equivalent to approximately 1 million hours of use. The consumption indicated by the manufacturer is only 1.7W in reading, 4.4W in writing and an average of 0.08W on average when idle. Minimal quantity compared to traditional HDDs. It also supports storage temperatures of up to 85 ° C and service temperatures of up to 70 ° C.

Finally, Kinston offers a unit with up to a 5-year warranty or 99% or less used percentage. Calculations that we can do simply by installing the Kingston SSD manager software that we will now see.

Kingston SSD Manager Software

This is the brand's own software, which can be used in the vast majority of storage units, of course in the Kingston A2000 and smaller variants. It is a fairly simple program that has four different sections. In the main window we are constantly shown information about the installed unit, such as its useful life, partitions, faults or alerts and the temperature of the unit.

The first section shows us the basic information such as the firmware version and the possibility of updating it. In the second, we have a more detailed report on the life of the unit. Important in this case will be the percentage used, which we have already discussed about it for the guarantee issue. The third section includes parameters related to security, we are talking about TCG Opal and IEEE 1667, being able to activate or deactivate these services. And finally, the last section includes all the events produced in the unit, where we could detect an unforeseen event in the event that we were shown a unit at risk or with failures.

Test equipment and benchmarks

Being an SSD that runs under PCIe 3.0 x4, any current chipset motherboard will work well enough for it. The equipment that we have used to carry out the battery of tests to the Kingston A2000 1TB is the following:

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel Core i5-9400F
Base plate:	MSI Z390 MEG ACE
Memory:	16GB T-Force Vulcan Z 3400 MHz
Heatsink	Stock
HDD	ADATA SU750
Graphic card	Nvidia RTX 2060 Founders edition
Power supply	Antec HCG Gold 750W

Let's see then if this unit is capable of approaching those 2200/2000 MB / s theoretical reading that it offers under the NVMe 1.3 protocol. The benchmark programs that we have used are the following:

Crystal Disk MarkAS SSD BenchmarkATTO Disk BenchmarkAnvil´s Storage

All these programs are in their latest available version. Remember not to abuse these tests in your units, since the life time is reduced.

Starting with the results offered by CristalDisk, we see that it has remained around 100 MB / s below its theoretical maximum, while in reading it has exceeded the estimated figure of more than 100 MB / s. These results are very good, and clearly deliver on what the manufacturer promises us. We are far from units like the Samsung EVO, we understand and assume it because the objective is not to compete with them in speed, but in price. Likewise, the results for 4KB blocks are more than satisfactory, demonstrating the solvency of the new generation SM controller.

If we continue with the AS SSD test, we see results very similar to the previous one, this is somewhat striking, since CristalDisk is always more benevolent in its results. The good feelings continue with figures very close to 2000 MB / s and also a really low latency of just 0.028 ms in reading and 0.030 in writing. In the third ATTO Disk test we have a maximum of 2.01 GB / s in almost all blocks greater than 64 KB, although it is true that the write performance is decreasing the bigger those blocks are. In any case, the peak is 1.95 GB / s for 1 MB blocks.

Finally, we have used Anvil's to also count the number of IOPS that this 1TB Kingston A2000 unit generates. In this case we have stayed at 129K for reading, far from the promised 250K, but in 4K QD16 block writing it presents no less than 267K IOPS, a sensational figure.

Temperatures

We have made use of the FLIR ONE thermal camera to check the temperature of the Kingston A2000 1TB SSD with and without workload. The ambient temperature is 24 ° C.

Idle temperature

Temperature in stress

In the first image we see the unit completely at rest, with a temperature that has been maintained around 38 ° C in its controller and around 30-32 degrees in its memories. If we perform continuous file transfers and stress the unit in a normal way, this temperature rises to 41-42 ° C at the controller and connection interface.

Be careful, we must bear in mind that it is right in front of the GPU, although we have even applied the heatsink integrated in the MSI Z390 ACE. We also do not intuit that it is necessary, because the temperatures are really good and far from 50 ° C. Everything will depend in part on the environment you have and the ambient temperature

Final words and conclusion about Kingston A2000 1TB

We come to the end of this review of Kingston's new PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD. We are finding it increasingly difficult to judge negative aspects of this type of hardware, since the high competition makes manufacturers adjust their quality / price to the maximum. The only thing we need to include is a heatsink, even if it is tiny, but we have already said that we will not need it.

It is just what happens here, since it is true that we do not have too high benefits with about 2100/2100 MB / s in reading and writing, but we are talking about a 1 TB drive that is presented to us for just over 130 euros. In addition, it is just what the manufacturer promises, neither more nor less, We recommend our guide to the best SSDs of the moment.

The components used are of high quality, Micron 96-layer TLC memories and Silicon Motion controller with high transfer and latency solvency. Its useful life is the generic one found in this type of TLC memory and also the 5-year guarantee. We value being able to have quite interesting management software and that it is a self-encrypting unit compatible with independent programs thanks to TCG Opal 2.0.

Without more, this unit can be found on the official website of the brand for a price of 135 euros, while the 250 GB and 500 GB versions are at 55 and 85 euros respectively. A highly recommended unit for its excellent performance / price ratio.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ PERFORMANCE / HARD PRICE TO OVERCOME	- A 2TB VERSION AT ABOUT 200 EUROS WOULD BE BREAKING
+ MICRON TLC MEMORIES AND SM2263 CONTROLLER
+ EXCELLENT WORKING TEMPERATURES
+ SUPER FINE PROFILE IDEAL FOR ULTRABOOKS
+ AUTO-ENCRYPTION AND LICENSE FOR ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE