Kingston XS2000 Portable SSD: price, specs & release date

Tom's Hardware lab-tested · 2021-10-29

sustained write before cache exhaustion (1TB): roughly 103GB at 1,890 MBps · sustained write after cache saturated (1TB): average 214 MBps · peak internal temperature after 400GB transfer: over 72 degrees Celsius · surface temperature (IR thermometer): 36 degrees Celsius

Kingston's XS2000 is a responsive portable SSD that delivers up to 2 GBps of throughput and decent pricing, but it lacks the sustained write performance of more capable DRAM-equipped SSDs.

Our 1 TB sample wrote roughly 103GB of data at 1,890 MBps before its write performance degraded to an average rate of 214 MBps for the remainder of the test.

It not only outperformed the SanDisk and most 20Gbps competitors in read workloads and managing small datasets, but it also hung fairly tight alongside the Samsung X5.

StorageReview lab-tested · 2021-10-05

Blackmagic Disk Speed Test peak read (1TB): 1,609 MB/s · Blackmagic Disk Speed Test peak write (1TB): 1,691 MB/s · IOMeter 4-thread 2MB sequential read: 1,987 MB/s · IOMeter 4-thread 2MB sequential write: 1,792 MB/s · IOMeter 4-thread 4K random write: 63,614 IOPS · IOMeter 4-thread 4K random read: 14,182 IOPS

Small enough to fit in your pocket, this drive demonstrated excellent performance in our testing, nearing Kingston’s 2,000MB/s read and write claims.

A lack of encryption and other security features are its biggest downsides.

In the four-threaded 4K random testing, we saw the XS2000 hit a respectable 63,614 IOPS write, though its 14,182 IOPS read leaves something to be desired

TechPowerUp lab-tested · 2021-10-06

sustained write to fill whole disk (2TB): 300 MB/s · sequential read/write at low queue depth: almost 2 GB/s · sequential mixed (read+write simultaneously): 1.2 GB/s · pseudo-SLC cache size: 30 GB

As a result, you get the smallest portable high-performance SSD in the world—all other competitors are considerably bigger.

In terms of sequential speeds, the drive almost reaches 2 GB/s at even low queue depths, which is important if you copy just a single file at a time, the most common usage scenario for a portable SSD.

Sustained write speeds of the Kingston SSD aren't that impressive. With 300 MB/s to fill the whole disk, it's slower than many of its competitors.