News Samsung Raises 3D NAND Pricing Following YMTC Blacklisting

[Admin]

Samsung is raising its 3D NAND pricing, as PC makers reportedly cancel orders from YMTC following blacklisting by the U.S. DoC.

Samsung Raises 3D NAND Pricing Following YMTC Blacklisting : Read more

 

[TechieTwo]

Some folks have no scruples and will exploit people any time that they can. Customer should remember this for future purchases if they get bent over when in need.

 

[dimar]

I gave up on Samsung when they removed the microSD from the newer phones.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

I don't care much for Samsung, either, or for the price increases, especially since SSD prices only just recently finally started dropping, but this isn't just exploitation, it's supply and demand. Also, they've probably been selling cheaper than they should have been to compete against China's overly cheap production based on slave labor, low wages, reduced R&D costs due to stealing IP, and government backing. Much of Chinese manufactured goods are unfairly priced which leads to difficulty or inability to compete and ends up creating artificially low prices in the short-term but hurts the industry and therefore the consumer in the long-term. Similar to Walmart/Amazon (which, uncoincidentally, have been able to do so largely through the sale of Chinese goods). So it's hard to blame Samsung et al for "taking advantage" of the fact they can actually price their products appropriately for a change instead of having to compete with unrealistic pricing.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

I gave up on Samsung when they removed the microSD from the newer phones.

That and the insane bloat, inability to root, and their general Apple-like attitude of "we know what you need/want better than you." My current phone is a Samsung but only because I got a ridiculous deal on it. Deal or not, I doubt I'll get another. Unfortunately, not many companies make good phones anymore, and even fewer make good tablets.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

I gave up on Samsung drives when they raised prices beyond the competition despite having lower performance. I'm giving up on Samsung phones after my current one because the S22+ is hot garbage and the subject of at least two lawsuits. I wish them only bankruptcy.

 

[hotaru251]

That and the insane bloat, inability to root, and their general Apple-like attitude of "we know what you need/want better than you." My current phone is a Samsung but only because I got a ridiculous deal on it. Deal or not, I doubt I'll get another. Unfortunately, not many companies make good phones anymore, and even fewer make good tablets.

I can only use Samsung phones.

One UI is just so nice...

also reliable.
I still have a gs8 running strong 5 1/2 yrs later.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

I'm the opposite. Don't really care for One UI and certainly don't care for all the crap that comes preinstalled that I can't get rid of. And while they pioneered split-screen in Android, they've for some reason done away with it and replaced it with this much worse pop-up view garbage. I will say my Samsung tablet (Galaxy Tab S2 8.0) still does really well, especially being 7 years old. For a while the only thing I would buy from Samsung was their SSDs, since they made good hardware but crap software/drivers/firmware (almost every "smart" Samsung device I've owned or used has been problematic and not very smart). Then SK hynix started releasing drives that are more efficient and cheaper and at least close in performance, and then tons of people started reporting receiving smaller drives than ordered when buying Samsung and nothing was done about it, leaving many of them screwed. So yeah, I'm done with them as well. I just don't necessarily entirely fault them for this. After all, there's still plenty of competition. If that weren't the case, this would be more of an issue.

 

[Co BIY]

I don't care much for Samsung, either, or for the price increases, especially since SSD prices only just recently finally started dropping, but this isn't just exploitation, it's supply and demand. Also, they've probably been selling cheaper than they should have been to compete against China's overly cheap production based on slave labor, low wages, reduced R&D costs due to stealing IP, and government backing. Much of Chinese manufactured goods are unfairly priced which leads to difficulty or inability to compete and ends up creating artificially low prices in the short-term but hurts the industry and therefore the consumer in the long-term. Similar to Walmart/Amazon (which, uncoincidentally, have been able to do so largely through the sale of Chinese goods). So it's hard to blame Samsung et al for "taking advantage" of the fact they can actually price their products appropriately for a change instead of having to compete with unrealistic pricing.

Hopefully higher prices also allow for a plan for capital investments for increased production.

I have come to believe that it is impossible to have "free trade" with "unfree" countries.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

Hopefully higher prices also allow for a plan for capital investments for increased production.

I have come to believe that it is impossible to have "free trade" with "unfree" countries.

Agree with the second statement 100%, and I like the phrasing. As for using the higher revenue/profits toward capital investments and more production, unlikely. Much more likely it will go toward the bottom line to boost stocks and provide higher payouts to shareholders.

 

[samopa]

I gave up on Samsung drives when they raised prices beyond the competition despite having lower performance. I'm giving up on Samsung phones after my current one because the S22+ is hot garbage and the subject of at least two lawsuits. I wish them only bankruptcy.

I had bought 10 Firecuda 510 2TB NVME drives, 2 of them fail before 1 year, the rest fail before 2 years (100% failure rate in 2 years), I also had bought more than 50 Samsung NVME drives (from 950Pro to 980Pro), none of them failed until now (some of them is more than 5 years old). I also had bought 2 ADATA SX8200Pro 2TB drives that failed after 3 years.

So in term of drives (SSD), my vote is on Samsung.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

I had bought 10 Firecuda 510 2TB NVME drives, 2 of them fail before 1 year, the rest fail before 2 years (100% failure rate in 2 years), I also had bought more than 50 Samsung NVME drives (from 950Pro to 980Pro), none of them failed until now (some of them is more than 5 years old). I also had bought 2 ADATA SX8200Pro 2TB drives that failed after 3 years.

So in term of drives (SSD), my vote is on Samsung.

That's very interesting. What are you using them for, and I assume they were all under the same conditions? I definitely agree Samsung drives are good quality, fast, and reliable, but with SK hynix in the mix now, Samsung has been relegated to second or possibly third (after WD, though those tend to be even more expensive) choice for me. ADATA is a definite no.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

I gave up on Samsung when they removed the microSD from the newer phones.

I bought a galaxy s20 fe from a pawnshop in may of 2022 for $220. It works fine minus a superficial but annoying scratch down the right side of the screen from who knows what before i got it. slapped a 256gb sd card in there. had the s9+ before that, the s8, and the s5 before that.

upgraded from m.2 960 evo 250gb to 980 pro 1tb with heatsink because the 960 died after about 6 years.

have had samsung tv's for about 10 years.

i've never really had any issues with them.

 

[Nikolay Mihaylov]

That's very interesting. What are you using them for, and I assume they were all under the same conditions? I definitely agree Samsung drives are good quality, fast, and reliable, but with SK hynix in the mix now, Samsung has been relegated to second or possibly third (after WD, though those tend to be even more expensive) choice for me. ADATA is a definite no.

Please keep in mind that anecdotal evidence is just that - anecdotal. But of course, also make decision based on my experience. I have never had an SSD fail on me, but I have two AData SX8200 (maybe not Pro though) which have severe drawbacks, like a MaxPayloadSize of 128 bytes, instead of the more common 256, problems with the ASPM implementation and problems with PCIe passthrough. Also, they do not seem to work in the external USB->M.2 enclosures that I have. And there were some reports that AData changes the implementation of certain drives so you cannot rely on the first day reviews for their metrics. I still buy cheap low capacity AData SATA SSDs for minor tasks because they are indeed cheep and I still trust them more than the no-name brands. And the SU800 are actually quite good. But these days Crucial MX500 seem to be available at better prices so I'm buyeng ever more of them.

IMO Samsung is still the brand to beat (QLC garbage notwithstanding). I'd go for them if the price is right - I usually buy them when I see them discounted on Amazon. I have never seen the newer drives at prices as low as the discounted Samsung drives so I don't have much reason to look around for those. BTW, I stil have a 256GB 850 Pro MLC drive with the 10 year warranty. Man, those were the days..

I also have several Corsair MP510 which have almost 3 times the endurance rating of most other drives, e.g. 1700TB vs 600TB, albeit at a slightly lower capacity as in 960GB vs 1000GB). Very happy with those too.

I guess this won't help anyone, just happy to share my experience

 

[Elusive Ruse]

I don't care much for Samsung, either, or for the price increases, especially since SSD prices only just recently finally started dropping, but this isn't just exploitation, it's supply and demand. Also, they've probably been selling cheaper than they should have been to compete against China's overly cheap production based on slave labor, low wages, reduced R&D costs due to stealing IP, and government backing. Much of Chinese manufactured goods are unfairly priced which leads to difficulty or inability to compete and ends up creating artificially low prices in the short-term but hurts the industry and therefore the consumer in the long-term. Similar to Walmart/Amazon (which, uncoincidentally, have been able to do so largely through the sale of Chinese goods). So it's hard to blame Samsung et al for "taking advantage" of the fact they can actually price their products appropriately for a change instead of having to compete with unrealistic pricing.

Good summary of the potential reasoning behind the bump.

 

[bit_user]

I don't mind a 10% price bump, as long as they can continue to meet demand. We've recently weathered far higher price hikes, it seems.

Just be glad that all of this didn't happen during the days of the peak Covid demand spike.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

Please keep in mind that anecdotal evidence is just that - anecdotal.

Of course. It could have been a batch in their case. It's still interesting. But this is why I don't pay much attention to people claiming Seagate sucks when looking at HDDs, because not only have I had excellent luck with them, but Backblaze's data shows Seagate to be, on average, roughly as reliable as WD.

And there were some reports that AData changes the implementation of certain drives so you cannot rely on the first day reviews for their metrics.

And this is exactly why I refuse to ever buy any ADATA drives. They're a dishonest company cheating their customers.

 

[bit_user]

this is why I don't pay much attention to people claiming Seagate sucks when looking at HDDs, because not only have I had excellent luck with them,

Not me, bro.

Backblaze's data shows Seagate to be, on average, roughly as reliable as WD.

Look again.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/blackblaze-q3-2022-hdd-report

 

[vertigo_2_20]

Not me, bro.


Look again.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/blackblaze-q3-2022-hdd-report

Right, but my experience and yours are just anecdotes and don't mean much. As for the link, not only is that very recent data, so even if it showed WD doing much better than Seagate, it wouldn't change the fact that hasn't really been the case in the past, and people have been claiming WD>>>>>>Seagate for years, despite Backblaze's evidence to the contrary. Also, some important points from those stats you linked:

• There's only three WD models, so a very low n-value
• some of the Seagate models have done exceptionally well, a few others have done decent, and yes, several are not looking good
• "Backblaze says the Western Digital drive is the only model with enough lifetime usage data to have a legitimate failure rate record, so keep that in mind"

I agree, this new data doesn't look great for Seagate, but it's not enough to convince me, largely because it's just one report after years of reports showing them doing better, and largely because it's not quite enough data for either (Seagate due to lifetime usage, WD due to low n-value) to make any real statistical conclusions. Also, I like Seagate as a company far more than WD, who is known for shipping drives to customers in boxes far too large for them and without proper (or any) padding/packaging, and couldn't even give customers a straight answer about the regular clicking noises their drives were making, whereas I've found Seagate extremely responsive and helpful dealing with customer issues/concerns. I have plenty of drives from both companies, and I think they both make good drives, I just personally prefer Seagate slightly and I take issue with people that blast them and claim WD as being far superior despite evidence showing otherwise, seemingly because it's the popular thing to do.

Interestingly--and again, just an anecdote--the only HDDs I've ever had fail on me were a Samsung (complete failure) and a WD external (partial failure; would randomly lose data).

 

[bit_user]

people have been claiming WD>>>>>>Seagate for years, despite Backblaze's evidence to the contrary.

HGST has long been the gold standard. And HGST is now WD. For a while, actually. I bought a WD Gold drive in 2019 that actually turned out to be HGST.

 

[vertigo_2_20]

HGST has long been the gold standard. And HGST is now WD. For a while, actually. I bought a WD Gold drive in 2019 that actually turned out to be HGST.

Yes, but just because they merged, doesn't mean WD will automatically get better, or even that HGST will continue to be as good. It's not unknown, or even all that uncommon, for a brand to get worse after being acquired. That said, I don't disagree about HGST/WD being good drives, I just disagree that Seagates are trash or even significantly worse, on the average. They've had their bad models, but so have the others. Based on the evidence I've seen, I feel they are close enough that people should just go with whichever is the better value. I just recommend against buying direct from WD due to packaging issues, and try not to buy multiple drives at the same time from the same vendor, since if that batch has issues, all your drives will be affected and may die early. If you do buy multiples together, you should do so in pairs from different vendors and/or at different times, and pair them up for backups, so one drive from one batch will be backed up to another drive from a different batch. Or if doing RAID, mix them up so your whole RAID doesn't die within days. BTW, I seem to recall when researching drives a few months back that the Golds typically are HGST.

For SSDs, I'd say Samsung, WD, and SK are all top-tier, and you can't go wrong with any of them (generally speaking; there's always going to be a bad drive here and there). But WD tends to be the most expensive, Samsung has issues with not getting the drive ordered, and SK is the most efficient (best for laptops) and cheapest. But most people don't need crazy speeds, and with backups, which should be done regardless of brand, reliability isn't necessarily a huge factor, so even a cheap SSD from someone like TeamGroup (just an example, don't take as an endorsement of the brand) is fine for many people. If all you're using it for is to hold games that can be redownloaded if the drive fails, or as a drive for temporary storage of active downloads or something else where the data isn't important, then reliability isn't really a concern.