Kingston Digital has announced a new storage device aiming at people wanting high performance at an entry-level price. The storage device is called the A1000 PCIe NVMe SSD. The M.2 is the first entry-level consumer-grade SSD of its type and Kingston claims that it will deliver twice the performance of SATA but will retail at “near SATA” pricing. The A1000 is said to be 20 times faster than a normal hard drive.

The A1000 is a single-sided M.2 2280 form factor that will work in notebooks and other systems with limited space. A1000 drives use a Gen 3.0 x2 interface, have a 4-channel Phison 5008 controller and 3D NAND flash. Read speeds are up to 1500 MB/s and write speeds are up to 1000MB/s.

“Kingston is excited to release its newest SSD for the entry-level PCIe NVMe market. Designed with 3D NAND Flash memory, A1000 is more reliable and durable than a hard drive, and doubles the performance of a SATA SSD. Now we can give consumers the benefit of PCIe performance at about the same price as SATA,” said Ariel Perez, SSD business manager, Kingston. “Consumers can replace a hard drive or slower SSD with A1000 and have the storage needed for applications, videos, photos and more.”

Kingston will offer the A1000 in 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB capacities. All versions of the SSD have a 5-year limited warranty and free technical support. Exact pricing and availability are unannounced, but we'll be waiting to see just how close Kingston is able to get to SATA pricing with these SSDs.