When the Kingston SSD Now series came out, they were solid affordable drives that didn't compromise too much performance for the price. Logan constantly recommended them and even their Hyper X series. It received strong reviews across the board. And now with plummeting SSD prices and frequent sales, the SSD Now series was one of the best options that you could get for the money.
Kingston SSD Now V300 drives launched with a synchronous NAND. But recently, Kingston has switched them out for an asynchronous NAND which is far slower. I don't even need to say anything more. Anyone with a brain can see how this is inappropriate.
Let's look at PNY now. Users of the PNY Optima drives have had unpleasant experiences.Consumers bought the drives expecting a Silicon Motion controller, but they received drives with SandForce-based controllers and different firmware.
The companies aren't even acknowledging that they did something wrong. They are blatantly trying to steal from our pockets. Imagine purchasing a brand new AMD FX 8350. But when you open the box, you find an AMD FX 6300 with and asterisk that says, "They perform the same". Although the FX 6300 is a good CPU, (I use one myself) you paid for an FX 8350 and you should get a FX 8350.
The solution, don't buy Kingston or PNY anything! Let them know the tech community is not one to be messed with. And with a market saturated with different companies making drives, we won't be sacrificing anything or taking a hit by not purchasing their drives.
So people of the build a pc forums. On your PCPartpicker lists, you know which two SSD companies to avoid now! And in fact, tell that person why you chose not to use a Kingston or a PNY SSD. Don't just stop at SSDs! Don't buy their GPUs or their RAM or anything they make considering they use such a shady business practice.
Hopefully we can set a precedent that the tech community is not one to mess with.
I agree. Kingston made a material change in its V300 product without changing the product name, and without communicating the change in any way. As a result, the new, lesser product gets listed in the same product page on Amazon, and gets to benefit from the reviews of the old, better product.
And like Mo says, for Kingston to claim that the new product is just as fast on compressible data is like saying a 6300 is just as fast as an 8350 for I/O bound tasks.
Companies are updating their products all the time, changing suppliers, place of manufacture, and firmware. Usually these changes make the product better. But this is a case where Kingston made a change that made the product significantly worse than it was before.
I don't know/care about PNY, I don't think I have ever bought anything from them and now I never will.
About V300 ... yes, it was a dick move to replace the NAND without announcing it first (or ever), but as I see it, V300 was repositioned on the market to a more "low end" market segment and HyperX Fury replaced the old V300.
Companies can do what they want, who gives a rats arse if the switched out the nand. There are plenty of other companies around that offer low price and decent quality drives. Let the market sort it out. Soon enough they'll realise their error.
If anyone has one of these drives then communication with the vendor will be better than jumping up and down about it.
People can buy what the hell they like. Kingston RAM is and has always been some of the best RAM money can buy.
I haven't been buying PNY products for years! Terrible customer service and rotten products is why I stopped.
I can't exactly say I've been boycotting Kingston. But considering how I've not made a Kingston purchase in a very long time (other than for a couple of cheap SD memory cards) I can't exactly say I've been patronizing them either.
So nice to see that leopards never change their spots. Once a dirt-bag always a dirt-bag, I suppose.
The reason we care that they switched out the NAND is that we rely on reviews, and changing the product in this underhanded way subverts the review process.
Based on what happened in this case, communication doesn't seem to be one of Kingston's strong points.