Kingston Technology—Kingston silently switched V300 SSD from fast synchronous to slow asynchronous NAND without changing model number
Kingston's V300 SSD shipped to reviewers with Toshiba 19nm Toggle-Mode 2.0 NAND (200 MB/s interface) but retail units were silently switched to Micron 20nm asynchronous NAND (~50 MB/s interface), resulting in up to 300 MB/s performance degradation. Kingston acknowledged the switch in March 2014, admitted not renaming to V305 was a bad decision, but defended the practice as maintaining 'flexibility to source NAND.' Community boycott ensued.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer Protection | -against | primary | -1.00 |
| Corporate Transparency | -against | secondary | -0.50 |
| Overall incident score = | -0.664 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.59)
Evidence (1 signal)
AnandTech investigation confirmed Kingston V300 SSD NAND switch resulted in up to 300 MB/s performance loss
AnandTech's investigation in March 2014 confirmed Kingston silently switched the V300 SSD from Toshiba synchronous to Micron asynchronous NAND, with up to 300 MB/s sequential read speed degradation. Review samples had the faster NAND; retail units received slower components.