XSReviews

The Kingston KC600 is a new budget-friendly SSD, designed to offer performance at the very limit of the SATA 3 interface from capacities that range from 256GB all the way up to 2TB. The drive is rated to deliver up 550MB/s sequential read speeds, regardless of capacity, with write speeds improving from 500MB/s to 520MB/s when moving from the 256GB drive to its bigger brothers.

So, what is that attractive price we mentioned earlier? Well, the KC600 costs just £40 for a 256GB model in the UK, with 512GB and 1TB models available at £65 and £146, respectively. Note that while a 2TB model is mentioned, pricing for this isn’t available in the UK at present.

For the larger capacities, the drives are also available as kits, which include the drive plus cloning software, a 2.5-inch SATA USB 3.0 enclosure, a 3.5-inch bracket (and screws), SATA power and data cables and a 7mm to 9.5mm adapter. That’s a pretty impressive package, containing everything you could possibly need to make use of this drive! The kits cost a little more, as you’d expect, coming in at £79 and £162 for the 512GB and 1TB models, respectively.

The KC600 sounds promising and we have a 1TB drive with kit to test, so let’s not make Dave keep reading any longer and get right to the good stuff.

Specs

Form Factor	2.5″
Interface	SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) backwards compatible w/ Rev 2.0 (3Gb/s)
Capacities	256GB, 512GB, 1024GB, 2048GB
Controller	SM2259
NAND	3D TLC
Encrypted	XTS-AES 256-bit encryption
Sequential Read/Write	256GB — up to 550/500MB/s 512GB–2048GB — up to 550/520MB/s
Maximum 4K Read/Write	up to 90,000/80,000 IOPS
Power Consumption	0.06W idle / 0.2W avg 1.3W (MAX) read / 3.2W (MAX) write
Dimensions	100.1mm x 69.85mm x 7mm
Weight	40g
Operating temperature	0°C~70°C
Storage temperature	-40°C~85°C
Vibration operating	2.17G Peak (7-800Hz)
Vibration non-operating	20G Peak (10-2000Hz)
Life expectancy	1 millions hours MTBF
Warranty/support	Limited 5-year warranty w/ free tech support
Total Bytes Written (TBW)	256GB — 150TB 512GB — 300TB 1024GB — 600TB 2048GB — 1200TB

Features

• Features the latest 3D TLC NAND technology
• Supports a full security suite (TCG Opal, AES 256-bit, eDrive)
• Read/write speeds of up to 550/520MB/s
• Limited 5-year warranty

Design

The KC600 has a pretty cool design, with a giant face (presumably that of Mr. Kingston, or perhaps an ancient idol responsible for the firm’s continued growth) and the Kingston wordmark embossed on the top of the drive in silver, standing in stark relief to the matte black body. The other side includes the SATA data and power connectors, plus a small sticker with the capacity and other important numbers.

The rest of the kit also looks decent, with the USB enclosure feeling plasticky but solid enough in the hand (and sporting a lock!) and the steel 3.5-inch bracket looking the business. Given the relatively minor premium for the kit version, I’d say the depth of the extras here is remarkable.

Performance

Here’s how the KC600 1TB performed in our regular run of storage benchmarks, all tested on the XSR test rig – which is currently sporting a Ryzen 7 3700X, RTX 2080 and Aorus X570 Master motherboard.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark has been one of my favourite benchmarks for evaluating storage speeds for a while now, thanks to its varied incompressible workload and extremely readable results. We recently updated to version 6 of the benchmark, which unfortunately means that we have a limited pool of results to use here. Therefore, this test should show predominantly whether the drive lives up to its claims for sequential write performance, as well as providing some insight into the KC600’s random access capabilities.

CDM 6 Read	Seq	4K Q8T8	4K Q32T1	4K Q1T1
Toshiba XG6 SSD	3227	1281	377	51.2
Samsung 970 Evo	3542	1476	389	49.4
Kingston KC600 SSD	548	234	223	41.8

 

CDM 6 Write	Seq	4K Q8T8	4K Q32T1	4K Q1T1
Toshiba XG6 SSD	3033	1186	303	134.2
Samsung 970 Evo	2462	1744	350	156.1
Kingston KC600 SSD	476	197	195	87.7

The KC600 performs well below the NVMe drives we’ve tested in 2019, but manages to hit right up against the 550MB/s barrier for the SATA 3 interface it uses. That’s a good sign for sure, and the remaining read results are strong as well, with the relatively high queue depth result showing performance in the same order of magnitude as the NVMe drives in the chart. Write speeds are less exciting, with a 476MB/s sequential result that falls some way below the 520MB/s advertised.

By comparison, the fastest SATA SSD we tested in an earlier version of the benchmark – version 3 – recorded a sequential read speed of 522MB/s and a sequential write speed of 470MB/s, showing the KC600 is impressive in its read speeds and consistent with other top performing SATA drives when it comes to writes.

AS SSD

AS SSD is another benchmarking tool quite similar to CrystalDiskMark, which uses predominantly incompressible data across a range of workloads including sequential tests, random performance and access times. First three numbers are MB/s and access time is in ms. We’ve got much more points of reference here!

AS SSD Read	Seq	4K	4K QD64	Acc. Time	Score
Kingston KC600 SSD	516	40	224	0.043	315
Toshiba Q300 SSD	522	39	315	N/A	406
Toshiba A100 SSD	489	37	319	N/A	405
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	325	27	249	N/A	308
Toshiba P300 HDD	155	0.5	1.6	N/A	18
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	73	1.8	15	26.3	15
Toshiba Canvio Premium	113	0.5	0.6	23.021	12
Samsung T3	345	24	32	0.100	91
Sandisk Z410	501	11	145	0.045	206
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	493	40	328	0.093	417
Samsung 850 Evo	516	34	382	0.059	467
Samsung 840 Evo	513	32	330	0.059	413
Corsair Neutron GTX	507	25	334	0.068	N/A

 

AS SSD Write	Seq	4K	4K QD64	Acc. Time	Score
Kingston KC600 SSD	447	79	185	0.041	309
Toshiba Q300 SSD	424	80	96	0.053	219
Toshiba A100 SSD	430	74	288	0.209	405
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	258	76	247	0.046	349
Toshiba P300 HDD	114	0.5	0.6	16.7	13
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	46	19	5	18.2	39
Toshiba Canvio Premium	111	0.5	0.5	17.6	12
Samsung T3	367	56	71	0.055	163
Sandisk Z410	407	78	215	0.237	333
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	475	95	251	0.075	393
Samsung 850 Evo	497	66	299	0.051	415
Samsung 840 Evo	497	69	207	0.054	326
Corsair Neutron GTX	473	62	295	0.062	N/A

The KC600 does pretty well, but in heavily-threaded scenarios it falls down compared to some drives in our tests, such as the Toshiba A100.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Atto is always an interesting test because it shows the relationship between data set size and read and write speeds in considerable detail.

Atto Read	1KB	4KB	64KB	256KB	1MB	8MB
Kingston KC600 SSD	44	178	530	553	553	553
Toshiba Q300 SSD	74	294	548	551	552	553
Toshiba A100 SSD	76	286	552	548	561	561
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	71	232	348	347	348	348
Toshiba P300 HDD	27	85	129	123	135	190
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	9	20	26	26	26	26
Toshiba Canvio Premium	9	33	117	117	117	118
Samsung T3	18	67	329	371	377	404
Sandisk Z410	78	247	518	531	536	533
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	83	286	537	553	552	553
Samsung 850 Evo	80	269	538	551	558	558
Samsung 840 Evo	94	280	535	551	555	555
Corsair Neutron GTX	15	61	336	452	530	540

 

Atto Write	1KB	4KB	64KB	256KB	1MB	8MB
Kingston KC600 SSD	41	158	443	470	478	480
Toshiba Q300 SSD	54	231	487	488	490	485
Toshiba A100 SSD	53	231	524	533	534	543
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	68	201	270	270	267	271
Toshiba P300 HDD	16	74	120	113	123	128
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	3	25	37	55	53	53
Toshiba Canvio Premium	10	41	115	115	116	116
Samsung T3	20	71	315	365	366	388
Sandisk Z410	69	184	419	423	426	428
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	79	251	510	526	525	525
Samsung 850 Evo	83	255	519	529	534	534
Samsung 840 Evo	81	260	515	527	533	534
Corsair Neutron GTX	15	142	474	470	493	498

Indeed, you can see that the KC600 is slower at small chunk sizes, representing random reads and writes, but speeds up considerably once chunk sizes reach around 256KB. The A100 remains faster, but the KC600 is still quite competitive.

HD Tune

We finish up with HD Tune Pro, a benchmark which produces three scores for average read speed, read access time, and burst read rate.

HD Tune Pro 5.50 Read	Average	Access Time	Burst Rate
Kingston KC600 SSD	411 MB/s	0.0ms	189.2MB/s
Toshiba Q300 SSD	425 MB/s	0.0ms	69 MB/s
Toshiba A100 SSD	330 MB/s	0.042 ms	99 MB/s
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	356 MB/s	0.042 ms	248 MB/s
Toshiba P300 HDD	126 MB/s	14.6 ms	294 MB/s
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	90 MB/s	16.9 ms	87 MB/s
Toshiba Canvio Premium	114 MB/s	17.9 ms	140 MB/s
Samsung T3	269 MB/s	0.090 ms	171 MB/s
Sandisk Z410	358 MB/s	0.035 ms	140 MB/s
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	321 MB/s	0.087 ms	221 MB/s
Samsung 850 Evo	370 MB/s	0.044 ms	250 MB/s
Samsung 840 Evo	358 MB/s	0.041 ms	231 MB/s
Corsair Neutron GTX	340 MB/s	0.059 ms	231 MB/s

The KC600 performs excellently in HD Tune, with one of the highest average speeds we’ve recorded and a solid burst rate as well.

Wrapping up

The Kingston KC600 is a medium to fast SATA SSD, offering strong sequential performance and middling speeds when it comes to random I/O. This makes it more than fast enough for most people, and makes a good choice if it’s competitive on price. The kit version is also worth considering, as it packs in useful extras like software and a drive enclosure at a very reasonable premium.