Three Budget 60GB SSDs Reviewed: Kingston SSDnow V300 vs Patriot Torch vs Kingdian S200

Whether you want to set up Intel Smart Response Technology to boost the performance of your Intel Core-based desktop (learn more) or need a low cost solid state drive to breathe new life into an older computer with a dead or slow hard drive, you’ll need to pick a budget SSD, and here I’m reviewing three cheap picks from Kingston, Patriot, and Kingdian.

Introduction

For each SSD, we’re going to review the features, specifications, packaging, and then share the benchmarks, so you can learn as much as possible about each SSD before buying one. If you don’t care about all that, simply scroll down to the Conclusion where I rank them by performance and value.

Kingston SSDnow V300 60GB

Kingston has a history of building decent solid state drives that are average performers at reasonable prices. The 60GB SSDnow V300 was released a couple years ago, so it’s not cutting edge, but I’ve used many of its larger 240GB cousins in client computer builds with no failures, so I’m excited to see how it compares to newer, cheaper options, since at $42, it’s more expensive than the other two drives in this review.

Features, Specifications, and Packaging

The Kingston SSDnow V300 series uses a SandFord SF-2281 controller paired with what is almost certainly Toshiba (though the chips are Kingston branded) MLC NAND.

  • SATA Type: III (6Gb/s)
  • Sequential Read Rating: 450MB/s
  • Sequential Write Rating: 450MB/s
  • Warranty: 3 Years
  • Price (at time of writing): $42.99 on Amazon.com

The Kingston SSD was the only one of the three units to include a small spacer to adapt the 7mm height of the SSD to the 9.5mm z-height of typical older laptop hard drives, which is important because some notebook computer designs incorporate the thickness of the drive to stay in place firmly.

Benchmarks

In our benchmarks, the Kingston SSDnow V300 60GB was able to outperform it’s rated specifications. Using Atto benchmark, read speeds of up to 530MB/s and write speeds of up to 495MB/s were observed. Take a look at the information from the benchmark utilities to see exactly how each SSD performed.

Patriot Torch 60GB

Having used a variety of Patriot products before, with some being better than others, let’s see how this brand name low cost SSD does, since the price weighs in at only about $30.

UPDATE: AFTER LESS THAN A WEEK OF USE, THE PATRIOT SSD FAILED COMPLETELY. THE LAPTOP I HAD INSTALLED IT IN FROZE, AND NOW THE DRIVE DOESN’T SHOW UP IN THE BIOS AS A PATRIOT SSD ANYMORE – INSTEAD, IT SIMPLY SHOWS PS3109S9 WHICH IS THE NAME OF THE CONTROLLER THE DRIVE USED. DO NOT RECOMMEND!

Features, Specifications, and Packaging

The Patriot Torch 60GB uses a Phison PS3109 controller paired with MLC NAND of an unknown manufacturer.

  • SATA Type: III (6Gb/s)
  • Sequential Read Rating: 530MB/s
  • Sequential Write Rating: 430MB/s
  • Warranty: 3 Years
  • Price (at time of writing): $29.99 on Amazon.com

The Patriot SSD did not include any additional accessories in addition the solid state drive itself.

Benchmarks

Before you look at the benchmarks, I need to tell you something that may or may not affect them. I lost the benchmarks of the Patriot SSD that I did on my Windows 10 desktop, so the benchmarks you see here are the Patriot SSD running as OS drive in a Lenovo ThinkPad T420, rather than being connected as a non-OS drive on my custom desktop built on an MSI Z87M-G43 motherboard. While benchmarks should not be affected much since both systems are powered by Intel SATA III controllers, there are probably some slight differences due to driver versions, hardware differences, Windows 10 vs Windows 7, etc. That said, the results should still demonstrate the performance of the SSD in an accurate manner, so here goes.

The Patriot Torch 60GB was not quite able to match its rated specifications, but it did come very close. My drive achieved read speeds of up to 505MB/s and write speeds of up to 412MB/s were observed. Take a look at the information from the benchmark utilities to see exactly how the Patriot SSD performed.

Kingdian S200 60GB

The only reason I bought this SSD was because it was cheap. At $27 at the time of purchase, this generic solid state drive costs less than the other SSDs in this roundup as well as pretty much every other SSD on the market.

Features, Specifications, and Packaging

The Kingdian S200 60GB uses a JMicron JMF608 controller paired with SanDisk-branded MLC NAND, which was a pleasant surprise – I expected to see generic chips with any identifying information scratched off or straight up missing (like in many cheap flash drives).

SATA Type: III (6Gb/s)
Sequential Read Rating: 462MB/s
Sequential Write Rating: 70.2MB/s
Warranty: 3 Years
Price (at time of writing): $26.99 on Amazon.com

The Kingdian SSD was the only unit to include four screws, though like the Patriot, it did not include the 7mm to 9.5mm spacer.

Benchmarks

While the Kingdian S200 60GB, wasn’t quite able to reach its rated read performance of 462MB/s (I got 460MB/s out of it), it surprisingly got almost double its rated 70.2MB/s write performance, with my unit achieving 138MB/s. While its overall performance is much worse than both the other solid state drives, it’s still faster than your average 5400RPM notebook hard drive, and it’s really the read speeds that matter for most desktop and laptop applications. For a write-heavy environment, though, you’ll want to pick the Kingston or Patriot SSDs over the Kingdian. Take a look at the information from the benchmark utilities to see exactly how the Kingdian SSD performed.

Conclusion

There’s no clear winner here – the Kingston, Patriot, and Kingdian SSDs each had their own pros and cons. That said, I’ve done my best to order them in a meaningful way.

Kingston SSDnow V300 60GB – $42.99

With the best overall performance and my personal experience using many of the different sizes of Kingston SSDnow V300 series SSDs in client computers with 0 failures (knock on wood), the Kingston is my top pick, even though it’s the most expensive SSD in the lineup.

Buy the Kingston SSDnow V300 60GB on Amazon.com.

Patriot Torch 60GB – $29.99

While the Patriot Torch doesn’t include any accessories at all, and doesn’t really stand out in terms of performance, it’s almost exactly the same price as the Kingdian SSD and does overall perform better. Plus, the likelihood that Patriot will stand behind their product should it fail within the three year warranty is higher than Kingdian.

UPDATE: AFTER LESS THAN A WEEK OF USE, THE PATRIOT SSD FAILED COMPLETELY. THE LAPTOP I HAD INSTALLED IT IN FROZE, AND NOW THE DRIVE DOESN’T SHOW UP IN THE BIOS AS A PATRIOT SSD ANYMORE – INSTEAD, IT SIMPLY SHOWS PS3109S9 WHICH IS THE NAME OF THE CONTROLLER THE DRIVE USED. DO NOT RECOMMEND!

Buy the Patriot Torch 60GB on Amazon.com.

Kingdian S200 60GB – $26.99

If you absolutely need to stretch your pennies, the Kingdian S200 isn’t a bad choice if you just need a basic 60GB SSD, and you’ll still notice the incredible improvement in terms of boot times, application load times, and overall system performance when compared to a mechanical hard drive. And despite its low price tag, it surprisingly does use name brand NAND and comes with a three year warranty, I’m not so sure that dealing with Kingdian if it does die would be any fun, but if budget is your #1 concern then the Kingdian is the SSD for you.

Buy the Kingdian S200 60GB on Amazon.com.

3 thoughts on “Three Budget 60GB SSDs Reviewed: Kingston SSDnow V300 vs Patriot Torch vs Kingdian S200

  1. I am quite surprised by the slow random read rate. I would expect it to be much better for SSDs and for writes to be more problematic.

    It’s very hard with SSDs as well to know if they are powerloss safe. They might be using write caches and if they don’t have capacitors (battery) to flush on powerloss then you could find yourself with a horribly corrupt FS. It would be great if you could test for that. Hotplugging would probably be the best way.

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