Kingston Readies Several New Products For 2016

Kingston continues to release new products under the premium HyperX brand across the world. For 2016, Kingston will launch products in both existing and new markets that will expand the reach of HyperX to more customers.

Budget SSDs Going Global

We were surprised to hear that Kingston has already shipped in volume a new UV-branded SSDNow drive with 3-bit per cell NAND flash. "UV" or "Ultra Value" is a new step for the company that pushes pricing even lower than the long-standing V series. The UV300 has shipped over the last quarter in Russia, India and Mexico. Kingston is considering the product for global distribution, a move we applaud. With low cost TLC flash and a growing audience for solid-state drives, this could be a great seller.

Existing products have shipped with Toshiba A19 TLC, but new 15nm flash from Toshiba could reduce the price even more for world-wide distribution. Kingston has an excellent reputation for great customer support and product reliability. Given the choice, many would choose a Kingston low-cost SSD over many other brands already shipping TLC-based low-cost SSDs.

With The Phison E7 Controller

Kingston had an amazing display with In Win's H-Tower, the Transformer-like case, to show off its upcoming Phison-powered NVMe PCIe SSD solution. The new drive will expand the Predator series in 2016. The Phison PS5007-E7 controller uses the NVMe protocol and connects to the host system through PCIe 3.0 x4.

After our meeting with Kingston, Phison released a statement saying the E7 should be ready for retail products as early as March 2016. The final specifications show 2500 MB/s sequential read and 1500 MB/s sequential write, with random performance as high as 300,000 IOPS read and 250,000 IOPS write. The controller supports up to 4 TB of capacity!

Kingston is on track to have the E7 early in the product's lifecycle. Given the popularity of the HyperX brand and the accessory package, this may be the best E7-based product to come to market. It's certainly one we are looking forward to seeing early on.

MobileLite

Two new MobileLite products are coming in early 2016. This is a product that Kingston has worked on over the years and even put prototype hardware in media hands to help develop the feature list.

The MobileLite Wireless G3 (shown above) features a 5600 mAh battery fully charged. The device charges smartphones, tablets and other devices quickly with a 2 Amp output. The system also has a USB port and SD card slot so users can access files or backup data almost instantly. Your devices connect to the new generation of MobileLite products over dual-band 802.11ac.

The MobileLite Pro offers the same features as the MobileLite G3 but includes a larger battery (6900 mAh) for more device charging and up to 29 hours of continuous use. The Pro model also includes 64 GB of embedded flash storage.

Both MobileLite products support iOS and Android mobile devices for seamless data backup through Camera Roll. These are perfect for safely and securely offloading family pictures from a smartphone. (We all know someone who has this issue)

CloudX For Xbox One

HyperX CloudX for Xbox One was unveiled at CES 2016. The officially licensed Xbox headset is based on the award winning HyperX Cloud II design that was build to provide great comfort and exceptional sound quality for several hours of gaming.

The headset provides in-line volume control, plugs directly into an Xbox controller, and ships with a sturdy hard shell carrying case. The presentation reminds us of professional tools that ship in hard shell cases. The HyperX CloudX is indeed a tool -- one that allows you to dominate the battlefield and bring home the trophies.

Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware, covering Storage. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. Follow Tom's Hardware on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.