Kingspec Warranty Service

[astroidea]

I just wanted to make this post to say that Kingspec is a great company and fully stands by their products.
I had issues with the drive where it would no longer write anymore.
http://forums.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=86707

I was worried that being such a small company in China, I might get the shaft in support. But I was pleasantly wrong. I filled out their RMA form that you can find on their site in excel form and emailed it to everyone on the contacts page. Joanna Wang was very friendly and courteous and replied the next day with my RMA. It surprisingly only cost me $7 postage with USPS to ship the drive from California to their campus in China, although I chose to pay an additional $11 for registered mail. But when it got there 5 days later, Joanna immediately sent an email notifying me that they've received the drive and will ship out a replacement within 5 days. I think they shipped it out sooner than that as in exactly a week later, I had the new drive in my hands. Thanks!

[Harryc]

Interesting article by Dvorak on SSD reliability you posted in the other thread. He quotes some failure rate percentages but doesn't back it up with any kind of quantitative data. Seems kind of shady ...
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347918,00.asp

[astroidea]

That's a really good point. I just tried searching for some data figures myself and I couldn't find any. Perhaps the technology is still too young? Well they have been out for about 3 years now.
But I find it true in my experience, I've had several SD cards and my SSD go bad, as well as Dvorak himself. But anecdotal evidence obviously only goes so far. Personally, I mostly just see the article as an explanation for why my drive failed.

[astroidea]

Also the two week wait for the drive wasn't so bad with something as nice as ubuntu off a bootable USB stick. I can get RDP work and still use my desktop through the driveless tablet, and still have access to all the files that was originally on the SSD.
So even if there was a high failure rate with SSD's, it's not too bad as long as there's good warranty, especially considering you seldomly lose your data in these failures.

[NWOhio]

Absolutely awful support. Had a 64GB SSD fail in my X40 after less than 6 months. Contacted the company via their (buggy) web site and was passed between several individuals, none of whom communicated well in English. Their only solution was to "contact the seller" for assistance. They refused further reply when I inquired regarding their 2 year warranty period.

In short -

A fairly expensive SSD that failed in less than 6 months of light, intermittent use

Poor communication from the company

Essentially NO support whatsoever

My first & last purchase of this company's products.

[AMATX]

My approach w/Kingspec was to make sure I'm fully backed up on whatever's on the SSD, and just assume I'd never mess with warranty stuff with them. Only for cheap, small, low end SSD, which can still be very useful.

Any other SSD are with better rated manufacturers. Just bought an OCZ recently(significantly more than low end Kingspec). While it's bigger and better than the Kingspec I had before, the actual response on one of my laptops is not really noticeably different. It's a Z61p, used for web surfing and very minor stuff, so different SSDs are not likely to make much of a difference. The main thing here -is- to have an SSD over a slower HD.

I do think there's a place for Kingspec, but it' on the low end. Just part of the upgrade/replace/short usage/throw away cycle. Save a few $$$ now, reinvest them later on other goodies.