Last September we published a budget SSD round-up featuring eight drives priced at or below $150. Kingston's SSDNow V Series was among the models tested, and at just $125 ($1.95 per gigabyte) the 64GB version was an exceptional value. Utilizing Toshiba's TC58NCF618GBT controller, the drive provided surprisingly impressive performance.

Kingston has since expanded their SSD range by adding the SSDNow V100 and SSDNow V+100 Series to the mix. They also released a portable 1.8" line called SSDNow V+180 designed for ultra-mobile devices, such as ultra-thin notebooks, netbooks and tablet PCs. Since the SSDNow V+180 Series is a spin-off of the original SSDNow V+ Series, it features the same Toshiba T6UG1XBG controller. As a result, the same sequential read/write throughput of 230MB/s and 180MB/s still applies, and it comes in the same 64GB, 128GB or 256GB capacities.

Solid state drives supporting the 1.8" form factor are nothing new and, in fact, many products we've tested have 1.8" alternatives. We don't consider the 1.8" OCZ Vertex 2 a viable option with its asking price of $240 for 60GB, but at around $25 cheaper than the 64GB SSDNow V+180 Series the Onyx certainly is. We will be keeping a close eye on this match up in our review, so read on to see how Kingston stacks up against the competition.