INTRODUCTION

   With NAND flash prices at an all-time low SSD manufacturers are rushing to release affordable yet high-performance M.2 NVMe models for the masses. As mentioned in our previous reviews even though up until somewhat recently the word "affordable" was used to describe 2.5" and M.2 SATA based SSDs (up to 500-550MB/s read & write performance) now it also applies for some entry level M.2 PCIexpress (NVMe) models (with up to 1500-2500MB/s performance). Last year Kingston launched their very first affordable M.2 NVMe model called the A1000 which due to extreme competition at around the same price point didn't quite live up to their expectations. One month ago, Kingston released the A2000 M.2 NVMe model and although it did take a while for a sample to arrive at our doorstep it has and so today, we'll be testing the 1TB variant.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   For the brand new A2000 M.2 NVMe model (currently available in 250GB/500GB/1TB capacities) Kingston decided to pair the SM2263EN (SM2263ENG) quad channel high-performance PCIe Gen3 x4 controller (NVMe v1.3 protocol) by Silicon Motion along with Micron's latest 96-layer 3D TLC NAND and a single 1GB LPDDR3 RAM cache module by Kingston. Thanks to this combination the A2000 1TB variant here with us today can achieve sequential read and write numbers of up to 2200-2000 MB/s and random read and write IOPS of up to 250k-220K. The SM2263EN also supports several technologies including NANDXtend (error-correcting with data protection), end to end data protection with SRAM ECC, S.M.A.R.T, TRIM, NCQ, thermal-throttling, active garbage collection, DevSleep (device sleep), SLC write acceleration (algorithms for optimal sustained performance - depending on free space up to 100GB can be used as SLC cache), AES-256bit hardware encryption and TCG Opal (Microsoft's eDrive). In terms of endurance/durability Kingston reports an MTBF of 2 million hours and write endurance numbers of 150TBW for the 250GB model, 350TBW for the 500GB model and 600TBW for the 1TB model (the entire A2000 line is covered by a 5 year limited warranty).