If you aren't using an SSD in your laptop or desktop PC in 2017, you're definitely missing out. There's very little reason not to insist on one, even if your budget is absolutely rock bottom. At the lower end of the market, 120 or 240GB of storage space is enough for casual users, and the speed benefits of an SSD outweigh the capacity advantage of a spinning hard drive. Your PC will boot and go to sleep quickly, programs launch without making you wait, and better responsiveness makes you more productive overall.
Kingston[1] is one of several companies that offer reasonably capacious SSDs at the lowest possible prices. It competes with WD, Adata[2], Samsung[3], Zotac[4] and Transcend[5] in the Indian market, but interestingly, has a two-pronged strategy. There's the A400 series and the UV400 series, both of which have very similar specifications and cost pretty much the same, but do have some differences that we will get to later.
Today, we're going to test the Kingston A400 240GB model to see if it delivers on its promise, and what you can realistically expect from it.
Kingston A400 specifications and features
The Kingston A400 is a standard 2.5-inch SATA SSD, but you can tell it's aimed at the commodity market just by looking at it. For starters, it comes in the simplest packaging we've ever seen; a thin cardboard-and-plastic bubble pack. There's no padding, though to be fair SSDs are not very susceptible to damage while shipping. You don't get anything else with it - no SATA cable, no screws, and no adhesive shim. This is a little surprising because drives like this are usually aimed at the upgrade market,...