The KC2000's biggest weaknesses show up on our ATSB tests of real-world IO patterns. Other drives based on the SM2262EN controller seem highly tuned for peak performance on lighter workloads, and suffer greatly on the harder tests. The Kingston KC2000 is missing that great peak performance, but it still suffers about as much on the harder tests. The KC2000 manages to generally stay ahead of entry-level NVMe drives on those harder tests, but it is outperformed by even Intel's QLC-based 660p in more realistic conditions where the drives aren't completely full and a faster SLC cache can be a big help.