So, I tend to browse AliExpress a lot, and do buy a lot of things from them. Most turn out fine, some are total junk or complete fakes. It’s what you risk. Anyway, for those needing some large m.2 NVMe storage but not having a lot of money, I saw this last night (and have ordered 1 myself)
So as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, this is literally just a Kingston NV1 that’s been rebadged as a “Heichi”. While the NV1 is in no way a great performance drive (it’s actually quite the opposite, very slow even for entry level NVMe 3.0 drives), it’s still a major OEM drive that you can get a 2TB SSD for $65 + shipping/tax.
Just thought there might be some folks on here that this would be useful for.
So it’s sh*ttiest brand ever existed on planet for anything related to disks / RAM rebranded as some chinese noname (which it actually is under the hood anyway)?
Yeah…Fantastic deal if you want to burn your money for something that will probably work for month without errors leading to timely death or completely dead on arrival.
P.S. My advice for anyone reading this - please don’t spend your money on garbage for SSD, buy Samsung or Intel instead for a bit more money, but it will…you know…work.
Kingston SSD’s work great. I’ve owned many of them. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them in terms of functionality. The NV1 is just designed as essentially the cheapest possible SSD they could make, and then marketed as the cheapest SSD you could buy. It’s still got major OEM parts, it’s just it’s QLC (and who knows whose QLC) w/ dramless 4-channel controllers (and again, it’ll use whatever controllers cheapest at the time). There’s a huge market for people who don’t need top of the market performance, and don’t want to pay top of the market prices.
Also it’s more efficient than most Samsungs, as Samsung generally have horrible efficiency so hurt battery life (I definitely would have rethought my purchase of a 970 Evo+ had I known how bad the efficiency on it was).
It’s a NV1, there’s no question about it being slow storage (for NVMe). That’s what the NV1 was. That was the whole point of the NV1. It’s only rated 2100 MBs reads, and most every review of it ever it failed to even match that.
However, again, not everyone needs 7000+ MBps, some would be happy with SATA speeds, but they have a machine that requires NVMe, for those types, the NV1 is perfect, as it’s very cheap.
You think it is the same as an NV1. You will find out when it arrives. Maybe it will be 2100MB/s reads or maybe it will be 50MB/s reads. Let us know what you actually receive.
I don’t care about functionality or speed if you buy chinese noname with slapped brandname (for some reason people still think it’s something reputable), that’s playing russia roulette in terms of not if, but when they die.
If you see inside of exactly the same Kingston products - it will be very different, compnents and even pcm sometimes. It’s absolute crap.
I have seen plenty of Kingston RAM and SSDs / USB storage devices 100% of which are dead or produced irrecoverable errors, usually much faster than 1 year.
Well yeah. I’ve also seen plenty of WD’s the same, Samsungs the same, Intels the same, Adata the same, Kioxia/Toshiba the same…etc.
Simply put, EVERYONE has lots of failures. That’s part of the electronics business.
The variable BOM, that’s becoming par for the course, other than 1st party OEM’s, almost everyone now has at least 1 model that has a variable BOM.
And the variable BOM doesn’t necessarily preclude quality. the NV1 successor, the NV2, is a FANTASTIC drive. One of the best value drives available. Performance with all it’s builds nearly on par with the 970 Evo+, but some of it’s builds giving significantly better efficiency. But all it’s builds, significantly cheaper.
Not everyone have 100% rate of failure, only nonames like what you offered above and Kingston.
Anything is better chance of not loosing data than Kinsgston, even something very cheap like Adata, WD or Crucial - are MUCH better, miles ahead better.
Both are very rare to get faulty one or instantly dead one (unless you get fakes)
Not sure why you seem to think Kingston has a significant rate of failure, but they don’t. They’re quality drives as long as you don’t expect them to perform at the level that a Samsung or a SK Hynix will.
My NV2 BLOWS my WD “Black” SN750 out of the water in performance and efficiency.
Like i’ve said - i seem to have a lot of experience, both personal and support-wise, it’s not assumptions.
I just really passionately hate this garbage, pretending to be reputable brand.
Take any brand that you’ve mentioned before (except chinese nonames obviously), pick any exactly same RAM of SSD disk models, take them apart - observe their PCB and chips.
They will look exactly the same.
Now take Kingston and any chinese noname brand you will not find 2 models that look alike, their chips will be different, even on the same board sometimes! Like it was scrapped from what’s been left out from manufacturing for different branded parts…Because it is literally what happens, but for some very unfortunate reason PR of Kingston seems to cloud judgement of people.
No you can’t buy cheap noname and Kingston 2 Tb SSD that will not die very fast if will work at all.
And in case of Kingston even their top-tier super-mega RGB top models will be exactly what i’ve described above inside.
But whatever, if you want to waste money and loose data or play russian roulette until the day it will die anyway.
Again, that’s called variable BOM. And MOST (non 1-st party) OEM’s use it nowadays.
I’ve owned literally HUNDREDS of SSD’s in the last years. Have supported TENS OF THOUSANDS including my last 2 jobs.
And I can say in my experience, the failure rate on Kingstons is right in line with the failure rate on EVERY OTHER OEM I’VE EVER USED.
Yes, they use variable BOM. Yes, that’s so they can sell it cheaper. Yes, htis pisses people off. But so does Adata on some of their drives. So does PNY on some of theirs. So does Silicon Power on some of theirs. So does Netac. In other words, almost everyone who doesn’t make their own parts uses a variable BOM for at least some of their products. Kingston is just the most open about it.
The shortest lived drive I ever owned (IE - not DOA but died after being used)? Reletech, but after that? Adata. Not Kingston.
The worst value drive I ever owned? Crucial P1. Not Kingston (in fact I just recently was willing to risk buying from Crucial again for the first time since buying the P1 it’s value for performance was so bad that it turned me off of everything Crucial for YEARS)
Most DOA drives I’ve had from any company? Intel (2). Again, not Kingston.
