Final Thoughts
Kingston once again does it again! With more mature NAND and better firmware they were able to achieve better performance than their previous KC2000 drive. Sequential read performance went from 3200 MB/s to 3500 MB/s and sequential write performance went from 2200 MB/s to 2900 MB/s. You cannot argue with that type of performance increase. Looking at our tests the KC2500 was in the top of all Gen 3 NVMe drives that we’ve tested, which is very impressive.
On top of that it did not require any type of heatsink or cooling to provide that performance. This really is a plain-jane drive, it is not flashy or anything, which is fine as many people will be installing this drive in a motherboard that has built-in M.2 heatsinks.
Another thing that the KC2500 has going for it is that it uses 256-bit XTS-AES hardware encryption as well as support for Microsoft eDrive and use of use of independent TCG Opal 2.0 security management software from McAfee, WinMagic and Symantec. These features make it a great business drive or will give you peace of find if security is a big thing to you.
Finally Kingston backs this drive with a 5-year warranty, which is great to see. Right now you can pick up to 1TB version of the drive for $194.62, which puts it at a premium for its security features. If you want to skip out on the security features the SK Hynix Gold P31 NVMe SSD is only $134.99 and offers similar speeds. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Kingston KC2500 M.2 NVMe Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Great overall performance
– Does not require a heatsink
– 256-bit XTS-AES hardware encryption
– 5-year warranty
Cons:
– Pay a premium for the security features
