Kingston HyperX Fury 120GB SSD Review

[section_title title=”Conclusion”]Conclusion

With Kingston’s HyperX range being primarily aimed at the gamer, the new Fury drive has been sitting on the test bench for a couple of days while I have put it through its paces.  The Fury was released to focus primarily on gamers who are on a budget; something which sounds very appealing when you combine performance and value but is this the case?  Has the Fury been impressive?

Going straight for the performance, the Fury isn’t exactly a top performing drive but we knew that beforehand; the Fury is marketed towards the budget end of the market.  With that being said, the read performance is more than acceptable although the write speeds were pretty disappointing to be honest; this is due to the SandForce controller not only being out-dated, but how it handles uncompressed data in real world situations.  The particular highlight however was the impressive IOPS on the write speed which the SandForce drives perform very well in; especially Kingston.

The Fury does have a lot going for it in the looks department as I really do like the two-tone dark silver and black finish; this is completed by the white test which acts like an accent.  One of the things I love about Kingston products is that they always feel very robust; I am always more than confident in the build quality and this is no different with the Fury.  The included 2.5mm shim is also a very strong point and can attribute to design; this allows you to install into a notebook that doesn’t natively support 7mm drives.

Now the most important factor in the entire review is the price; after all the Fury is targeted to gamers on a budget.  The current price is £56.99 at Overclockers UK which is pretty interesting as it’s as cheap as the Crucial M100 and is more than £8-10 cheaper than the Samsung 840 EVO which is a huge plus point.  I can’t help but feel that if the Fury was in-between of Kingston’s own V300 drive and the HyperX 3K in terms of pricing then it would be a lot more appealing.  That being said, the drive still represents excellent value for money even though it uses the SandForce SF-2281 controller.

Overall the Fury delivers on exactly what it set out to do; provide a good value alternative which focuses on the needs of the gamer as opposed to those looking solely for performance.  The Kingston HyperX Fury 120GB is a very welcomed addition to the HyperX gaming range and if I was limited in budget and in the market for an additional SSD, then the Fury would most certainly be on my shortlist of future purchases.

Huge thanks to Kingston for sending the drive in for review and I look forward to seeing more in the near future.