Final Thoughts
To say the Kingston SSDNow V+180 Series gave us mixed results would be an understatement. Having never run the Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller through our file copy and application tests before, we weren't sure what to expect. The fact that this is a tiny 1.8" SSD has nothing to do with performance as the recently reviewed Samsung 470 Series 256GB drive is essentially a 1.8" SSD in a 2.5" housing.
Our only expectations were that the SSDNow V +180 64GB drive should be faster than the cheaper SSDNow V Series 64GB drive, which uses the Toshiba TC58NCF618GBT controller. Things weren't quite that black and white.
While the SSDNow V+180 64GB shocked us with blistering fast transfer speeds in all three of our file copy tests, application performance varied greatly. The Windows 7 boot time was impressive, beating all budget SSD drives we've tested to date. However, the SSDNow V+180 64GB showed disappointing results when measuring the StarCraft II level load time. Instead of being the fastest budget SSD, the SSDNow V+180 performed the worst in our StarCraft II test, matching the speed of a traditional desktop hard drive.
Interestingly, the Intel X25-V 40GB showed a similar performance trend as it was the second fastest SSD when loading Windows and the second slowest when measuring StarCraft II load times.
The similarities stopped there as the Kingston SSDNow V+180 64GB showed much stronger synthetic read and write performance, for the most part. In fact, the SSDNow V+180 64GB's only real weakness was NCQ performance, just like the SSDNow V Series 64GB.
When testing with the Atto Disk Benchmark, the Kingston SSDNow V +180 64GB lived up to the claimed read and write throughput of 230 - 180MB/s. The SSDNow V+180 64GB's write performance stood out among the other drives, falling victim only to the SandForce SF-1200 based SSDs.
The Kingston SSDNow V+180 64GB fares well against most 1.8" SSDs. The cheaper OCZ Onyx 1.8" 64GB was considerably slower, while the Vertex 2 1.8" 60GB simply isn't worth its $240 asking price. The Crucial RealSSD C300 which wasn't tested in this review remains a viable option, but the 64GB version only has a write throughput of 75MB/s, so we are skeptical as to how it might hold up.
Anyone seeking an affordable 1.8" SSD should check out the Kingston SSDNow V+180 64GB. We firmly believe it's one of the best options under $200 and it's certainly an ideal product for tablet PC or netbook users looking to make their device a heck of a lot snappier.