Samsung 850 Evo And 850 Pro 2TB SSD Review

[Guest]

Samsung is updating its SATA SSD product line by adding new 2TB options to the 850 Pro and 850 Evo families. Are they any better than the existing models?

Samsung 850 Evo And 850 Pro 2TB SSD Review : Read more

 

[Jeffs0418]

Great article. It seems the new EVO's might go down in history as a tough act to follow.
I purchased a 250GB model several months ago and love it.

 

[soldier44]

Just picked up the 512gb version and love it. Will get another one soon for raid 0. A grand for the 2Tb wow but get what you pay for.

 

[eklipz330]

another 2 years before this falls within normal prices?

 

[Jeffs0418]

These are perfectly reasonable per gig prices. If you mean significantly lower prices it certainly wont be 2 years!
Wait just a few short months as more 2TB consumer SSD's hit the market and watch them tumble.

 

[mr grim]

Just about to get my first SSD, been waiting forever for the tech to mature a bit and for the price to become more reasonable, my first ever SDD I have ordered is the 1TB 850 Evo that I picked up on Ebay for $450 AU, just hope the saving is worth the risk, if I purchased one locally I would be looking at around the $600 price range, these new 2TB drive would likely cost well over the $1000 mark.

 

[uglyduckling81]

Even the first Gen SSD's were mature enough to use. My first SSD was the OCZ Agility. AU$510 for 128Gb in 2010 I think. What a game changer.
I only stopped using it when the laptop I had put it in got stolen last year.
The worst part of SSD's has been using someone else's PC without one. It's disgusting doing support on an OS that isn't installed on an SSD.

 

[AndrewJacksonZA]

Firstly, Tom's, I'm begging you guys, please stop with the compact charts that require clicks to see them and especially, ESPECIALLY the lazy-loading of the charts. It really breaks my focus on the article when I'm scrolling through, reading text and then all of a sudden the text shifts down and I lose my place because some graphs above it just loaded.

Now that my request to you is out the way, thank you for the article. The 2TB EVO really looks amazing!! I'm not a Samsung fan, but they definitely have my round of applause for this drive, especially because of the SLC emulation.

 

[mapesdhs]

"In this section, you'll find the 850 Pro on the right side and the 850 Evo on the left. ..."

Except for the two images immediately above that line.

SanDisk stated a while ago they wanted to ramp up to 8TB SSDs as quickly as possible, but I'll believe that when I see it. Unlikely they'd chuck out a 4TB now if they can make money from a 2TB first (really wish just once some company would properly leave the others behind instead of milking every inbetween stage of a tech as much as possible).

 

[mapesdhs]

(Chris, trying to reach the UK site atm to edit comments results in a page redirection error)

"The only drives faster than Samsung's 850 Pro and Evo 2TB in sequential writes are the 850 Pro and Evo 1TB."

Why have you used a bar graph with a non-zero origin for the results? I really hate that, it's very visually misleading. Please replace the image with a graph that has the origin at zero so it will at least be visually logical. The whole point of a bar graph is that the visual impact can allow one to infer an immediate sense of difference, something which is destroyed by using a non-zero origin.

In contrast to this, why do all the PCMark8 tests have zero origins, which have almost no results variation at all? Actually I don't know why anyone bothers with that suite, it tells one nothing useful IMO, I mean does anyone really care about Service Times for games? Level loading and to what extent SSDs can reduce in-game stuttering, sure, but then this is achieved with just about any SSD.

Anyway, please replace the non-zero-origin graph for the Seq. Write data.

Ian.

PS. Why does the Vector 180 show such an odd performance wobble as it moves up the queue depths for the seq. write test?

 

[zodiacfml]

Actually, it was boring. Many SSDs already saturated the SATA interface, including the AHCI protocol. Yet, one would still get a Samsung SSD because of its V-NAND tech for longer NAND life.

 

[mapesdhs]

... Yet, one would still get a Samsung SSD because of its V-NAND tech for longer NAND life.

I'm building a couple of systems atm for different types of user (one a 5GHz 4-core gaming system with a 980 Ti, the other a 4.8GHz 6-core pro system with Quadro), both chose 850 Pro 512GB units for the longer warranty and higher endurance.

Ian.

 

[Eggz]

Good, now put it in an M.2 form-factor to dominate the notebook market!

 

[hst101rox]

From the battery life test, it seems like the 2TB SSDs consume less power than the 1TB versions, although on the front of the 850 EVO 2TB drive, it says it takes 1.95 amps instead of the 1.4 amps of the 1TB drive.

 

[photonboy]

mapesdhs,
SSD lifespan is measure in DECADES for desktop usage even with TLC memory, and especially for usage in a gaming PC which is not going to have much in writes.

It's not much of an issue really, and even then it won't suddenly stop working, just a slow loss in space as sectors are blocked off according to wear levelling.

Warranty is another issue, and the drive can fail for other reasons but write endurance is very unlikely to be problematic aside from constantly used server SSD's.

 

[Frozen Fractal]

I am eager to see what TurboWrite, TLC with SLC cache, and V-NAND can do with NVMHCI protocol.

 

[kinney]

Samsung has had enough problems with firmware and hardware issues the last few years that I told myself I wasn't going to be buying one of their drives. To see firmware issues pop up in the 850 Pro 2TB just confirms my growing bias.

Unsure on the wisdom considering all of SS's problems in giving the EVO the Editor's Choice, this drive was ran through some tests not used for months.
I'm going to be building soon, and will be going with Crucial. Most likely the MX200 1TB.

 

[juanjostorreshernndez]

according to results, I would change their names (PRO to EVO and EVO to PRO).

 

[Frozen Fractal]

according to results, I would change their names (PRO to EVO and EVO to PRO).

Actually, the name imo is correct. Only due to TurboWrite, EVO gets a performance boost on writes. That's it. On the other hand, PRO is inherently fast due to MLC NANDs and you can see it does very good over EVO at reads, and random workload but in write, it's falling off due to not having TurboWrite. So it's like comparing a Mazda RX-8 with beefy supercharger that can outperform a Toyota Supra at stock. But Supra is inherently fast, so the edge should always be to Supra anyway.

And besides, we haven't talked about how mad EVO goes after few months

 

[juanjostorreshernndez]

I think EVO performance is good enough, and having the same 2TB capacity as PRO, I don't see any reason to spend over $200 just for having better reads. take into account that EVO $800 price is really expensive yet.

 

[Frozen Fractal]

That $200 premium is for increased durability. TLC isn't supposed to hold a place in durability & performance thrones technically that is, as long as vendors don't find a permanant solution to it. Even if you get the EVO, the reason is still valid. Samsung may have fixed the issue with TLC NAND wear and slow write IOPS for now, but it's going to take a lot more for a permanant one. They may have to look for LDPC for EVO.

My point is that, price premium of PRO is justified.

 

[mapesdhs]

mapesdhs,
SSD lifespan is measure in DECADES for desktop usage even with TLC memory, and especially for usage in a gaming PC which is not going to have much in writes. ...

Read my post; one user wanted the longer warranty, the other will benefit from the better performance, etc. since it's for pro tasks, not gaming.

Ian.

 

[juanjostorreshernndez]

If SSD's capacity keeps grawing, maybe its time to forget about HDDs.

 

[Frozen Fractal]

If SSD's capacity keeps grawing, maybe its time to forget about HDDs.

Actually, SSDs can grow well beyond 2TB, even now. The reason they aren't is because of cost. The more you shoot for the moon, the difference of cost between SSD & HDD becomes even more visible. On that note, I think Toshiba's new die-stacked TSV TLC and BiCS TLC NANDs will offer lower price/GB in the coming years. Besides, Micron & Intel developed a new kind of storage called "3D X-point" technology" which farther promises to reduce the concerned debate.

Overall, there's now new hope for us to have upon SSDs in the future, and it may be in sometime after 2018 that SSDs will try to ascend the thrones of HDDs.

 

[jkrui01]

if it was an intel or nvida sdd it would be perfect, but guess what, is just from Samsung, so for toms still not good enough. I sell a loooot of ssds, intel,ocz,kingston, corsair,etc etc, all malfunction EXCEPT Samsung, not a single one has failed in this 4-5 years,and i sell more samsung than others,people trust my jugdment and work, but at toms they just count the brand.