Kingston is the leading memory manufacturer, and one of the biggest SSD vendors, too. Previously, their lowest-priced entry-level offering for M.2 NVMe was the Kingston A2000—a great overall SSD with good performance at an attractive price point, which bagged our Editor's Choice and Great Value awards back in the day. Its price point isn't the lowest on the market though, so I can understand Kingston wanting to release a product for this buyer group, too.

Internally, the Kingston NV1 is based on a Silicon Motion SM2263XT controller—a low cost DRAM-less design we've seen on several other SSDs before. As NAND flash, Kingston is using 96-layer 3D QLC from Micron. At least that's the configuration of our review sample. There are only a few reviews of the NV1 out there because Kingston hasn't been sending out samples to press like they usually do. Other reviewers report that their drives came with a Phison E13T controller—a low-end model, too. This component-swap business is terrible for the end-user because there's no way to know what product you have purchased. Of course, Kingston is playing the "we're not announcing any specific controller or flash" game, but that's not how people are convinced they should trust a company with their important data, at least in my opinion. Kingston is a brand with an impeccable reputation, and used by millions of people worldwide, they of course are affected by all the various shortages out there, but I somehow doubt making a quick buck is worth deceiving and losing customers in the long run.

Most synthetic performance results of the NV1 are alright and match the drive's positioning. The only exception is 4K Random Mixed, which loads the drive with read and write requests at the same time. This is an important test many reviewers skip—in real-life, it's extremely uncommon to see only reads or writes. Rather, the typical activity for an SSD is a mix of reads and writes. In this test, the Kingston NV1 is the worst drive in our test group, even worse than all SATA and SATA QLC drives. I'm almost wondering if this is a firmware bug; on the other hand, we've never tested a DRAM-less QLC SSD before.

Real-life performance of the Kingston NV1 isn't impressive either. It's the slowest M.2 NVMe SSD in our test group, barely faster than the various SATA drives we have. Even other value drives, like the ADATA Swordfish, Lexar NM620, Corsair MP400, and Crucial P1, are considerably faster, by up to 15%. Midrange NVMe drives are roughly 23% faster, and the best PCIe Gen 3 SSDs are 27% ahead. The fastest Gen 4 SSDs are at least 30% faster. Of course, if you're coming from a mechanical HDD, the NV1 will still seem very fast, just like any other SSD. Compared to SATA QLC drives, the NV1 offers a 30% performance uplift, making it a definite upgrade.

With a pseudo-SLC cache of 243 GB, the NV1 is very well equipped to handle incoming bursts of write activity. While the SLC cache soaks up writes, the speeds are great—almost 1.7 GB/s. However, once the SLC cache capacity is exhausted, write speeds plummet to around 100 MB/s, which is comparable to the write rates of most mechanical hard drives. Filling the whole 1 TB capacity completes at 139 MB/s, which is weaker than any TLC SSD we ever tested, including SATA 2.5". The only drives that are slower in this test are the Samsung 870 QVO and Crucial BX500, both SATA QLC SSDs. That said, this won't be a big deal for most consumers, as their write activity is so low the SLC cache can always absorb the incoming burst of data.

Given the price point and positioning of the Kingston NV1, it isn't expected to include a heatsink. You'd assume this is a good reason for Kingston to make doubly sure thermal throttling is well-behaved. Unfortunately, that's not the case. The thermal throttle point is set extremely low, at only 60°C software-reported and 68°C measured. Considering all components on an SSD are engineered to withstand at least 100°C, this is a huge margin. What makes things worse is that once the drive starts throttling, its performance will fall off a cliff until temperatures have recovered. This will be very noticeable during normal use as the system will appear to slow down tremendously; with serious disk IO load, it will even seem frozen, or stuck. Other SSDs use more gradual throttling that has less of an impact on the user experience.

So far, there isn't much to get excited about for the NV1, but that changes with pricing. At just $85 for the 1 TB version, the Kingston NV1 is one of the most affordable M.2 NVMe SSDs on the market. That's exactly why I bought the NV1. Kingston doesn't sample it, and it was super cheap during Black Friday, so I thought I'd bring you the review. Such an attractive price point will be tempting for a lot of people, especially those who don't think of themselves as power user and would rather make the most of every dollar because their computer is rarely used and not their highest priority. Even at that price point, there are plenty of alternatives that are a better choice than the Kingston NV1. First of all, make sure you're not buying an M.2 SATA drive—you want M.2 NVMe. Now check if you can find something with TLC—it'll always be faster than the NV1. Right now, interesting low-cost TLC drives are the Team Group T-Create Classic ($79), Team Group MP33 ($82), and Acer FA100 ($84), among others. If you are willing to go down the QLC route, the Intel 660p ($80) and 670p ($89) will offer better performance thanks to their DRAM cache chip, and the $90 Sabrent Rocket Q is worth mentioning here, too. If you are looking for the best price/performance, consider the WD Blue SN570 ($90) or Kioxia Exceria ($85, albeit not available in the US). Both drives are a huge upgrade over the NV1 at only a minimal price increase. If you're thinking about buying from Kingston because they are a reputable brand, do consider that they are knowingly omitting important specifications to have the option of silently changing out components, thinking most people will never notice.