Samsung 850 Evo-series 1tb 25 Solid State Drive Review

When we reviewed the high-end Samsung SSD 850 Pro bulldoze earlier this year, nosotros were very impressed by its speed (it'south still the fastest overall of any SATA-based bulldoze we've tested) and its ten-yr warranty, double that of about other enthusiast- and consumer-focused solid-state drives (SSDs). Given the functioning bottleneck that the SATA 3.0 interface has become, however, information technology really wasn't that much faster than other, much more than affordable drives, such as the excellent Crucial MX100 or the older Samsung SSD 840 EVO. That made the SSD 850 Pro hard to recommend to mainstream users—it was more of a specialty drive for power users seeking every last bit and byte of speed-per-2nd from their SSDs.

At the fourth dimension, though, we predicted that Samsung would probable evangelize a cheaper model, an SSD 850 EVO bulldoze, before as well long. And we theorized that this eventual bulldoze might combine the cost-effective Triple Layer Cell (TLC) NAND memory-fleck technology (nowadays in the SSD 840 EVO) with the speed and endurance benefits of the newer kind of retentiveness, 3D Five-NAND, that debuted in the SSD 850 Pro.

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If y'all're reading this, it's obvious that that time has come.

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The SSD 850 EVO ($269) is indeed here, debuting on Dec. 8, 2014, and expected to start selling to consumers later in Dec. And it'south a good i. It comes in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB versions. The drive's performance is very impressive, and its five-year warranty bests that of other mainstream drives. (Most of those come up with three years of coverage.) Pricing may be its biggest hurdle to SSD distinction—at least at first.

Nosotros reviewed the SSD 850 EVO in early December 2014, and at launch, the price was $269 for the 500GB model we tested. That makes the SSD 850 EVO much more affordable than the SSD 850 Pro (which, when the SSD 850 EVO launched, was selling for most $340 at the same chapters). But that'due south expensive compared with some other mainstream drives. (Crucial's 512GB version of the MX100, for example, was bachelor online for about $200.)

All the same, those comparisons are based on the launch price, or MSRP, for the SSD 850 EVO. The street prices of SSDs often wind upward being much lower than the MSRP—peculiarly once a couple of months take passed. And so while the initial pricing on the SSD 850 EVO might seem a bear upon high versus some of its competition, we'll take to expect and meet just how much of a "bargain" this new bulldoze ends upwardly existence once it's been out for a bit.

Samsung does take a history of apace adjusting the street prices of its drives. For instance, the SSD 850 Pro, which, when we wrote this, had been on the market about iv months, was selling for about $70 below MSRP at both the 512GB and 1TB capacities. And the SSD 840 EVO that the 850 EVO is replacing has generally kept pace with other budget-to-mainstream-priced SSDs over the last year or then, making it (depending on the sales available on any given 24-hour interval) one of the most affordable big-proper noun drives you could purchase.

For the record, at launch, the pricing for the SSD 850 EVO's other capacities—120GB ($99), 250GB ($149), and 1TB ($499)—places the drive closer to the enthusiast realm than the mainstream-drive market place. The street prices of both the enthusiast-aimed Crucial M550 and Intel SSD 730 Series drives are mostly lower at similar capacities. To be off-white, though, as we'll see afterwards in testing, the SSD 850 EVO bests fifty-fifty about enthusiast-course drives in overall operation. In a few tests, it even beat out the company'south ain SSD 850 Pro.

When we wrote this, those looking for very good SSD performance—and the lowest possible price—in a bulldoze at 250GB or upwards might have been improve off opting for a Crucial MX100 drive or the older Samsung SSD 840 EVO (while supplies of that latter SSD final). But assuming street prices drop a off-white bit below MSRP, as they consistently have in the by, the SSD 850 EVO will likely wind up being the best residue of speed, affordability, and drive longevity as 2015 progresses.

But note that the 1TB-capacity version of the SSD 850 EVO may evangelize slightly dissimilar performance. The 500GB model we tested, as well as the bottom capacities, use a dual-core MGX controller, while the 1TB version uses the same MEX controller that's in the SSD 850 Pro. Samsung claims that performance with either controller should be similar, simply that the MEX controller has an actress core, which isn't very helpful with smaller bulldoze capacities, but consumes actress ability. (Nosotros didn't have an opportunity to test the 1TB version, but the 500GB.)

Design and Features

The SSD 850 EVO combines two storage technologies from previous Samsung drives: The same TLC from the SSD 840 EVO, which helps brand storing more data less expensive, and 3D cell stacking (which Samsung calls "V-NAND"). That carries over from the college-stop SSD 850 Pro.

Technically, TLC isn't rated for the same read/write endurance every bit drives that use more traditional Multi-Layer Cell (MLC) memory, all else beingness equal. Just the extra endurance afforded by the 3D stacking makes up for that—and and so some. While all versions of the SSD 850 EVO have a five-year warranty, the 500GB and 1TB models are rated to handle 150TB of full writes, or over 80GB a twenty-four hours. (The lesser capacities are rated to handle "merely" 75GB of writes.)

If you lot're writing more 40GB of data to your bulldoze every day, seven days a week, you're more than likely running some type of server, and you shouldn't opt for a consumer-focused bulldoze, anyway. Most boilerplate consumers volition probable get well more than than five years of reliable performance out of the SSD 850 EVO drive. If you want your drive to concluding longer, you might look at the SSD 850 Pro, which has a whopping 10-year warranty. While the warranty length is no guarantee of a given drive's longevity—nor should you look at it as an "expiration engagement" on the drive—it'south a signal of Samsung'south relative expectations well-nigh the EVO line versus the Pro.

On the subject field of longevity, we would be remiss not to mention the speed slowdowns experienced past some users of the last-generation SSD 840 EVO drive, equally covered extensively by the hardware site PC Perspective. Since the SSD 850 Pro also uses TLC retentiveness, users may be wary of the SSD 850 EVO. In response to the problem, Samsung issued a software fix for the SSD 840 EVO drives, which seems to have solved the issue.

Information technology seems unlikely that newer drives will suffer from a similar glitch—most especially, because the memory type in the SSD 850 EVO is fundamentally unlike than that of the 840 EVO. That'southward thanks to the addition of V-NAND, which presents a completely different storage paradigm. Instead of stacking all the memory cells side-by-side, as solid-country storage drives have traditionally done in the by, Five-NAND also stacks storage cells vertically (hence the "V"). This allows the company to pack more than storage onto the bulldoze without needing to ever-miniaturize the cells to pack more in, while keeping speed and endurance high. Information technology is, literally, an issue of physical-space availability.

The Samsung SSD 850 EVO is housed in a blackness metal trounce, front and back...

Much like most recent drives we've seen, it is 7mm thick for wider compatibility with sparse laptops and ultrabooks. In the bones bulldoze kit we received, Samsung did not package a "spacer" frame, which some SSD vendors practise, to fill up the actress space in larger notebooks that take nine.5mm-high drive bays. Y'all'll accept to improvise your ain if you own such a laptop. (Meet our guide to xx Terms You Need to Know When Buying an SSD.)

Dissimilar many SSD families, which tend to exhibit lesser performance the further you lot drib down the capacity ladder, up and downwards the line the SSD 850 EVO has the same rated 540MB-per-2nd sequential-read speed and 520MB-per-second sequential-write speed, whether y'all opt for the 120GB base of operations model, the 1TB version, or either of the two capacities in between (250GB or 500GB). The pricier SSD 850 Pro is rated slightly college at 550MB per 2d for reads, simply at the aforementioned 520MB per second for writes, at most capacities. This is of import for those considering the smaller-capacity versions of either the Crucial MX100 or the SSD 840 EVO. Those drives have significantly lower rated speeds—particularly write speeds. As a result, if you're looking specifically for a drive in the 120GB range, and write speed is important to you, you'll desire to steer clear of those drives in favor of the SSD 850 EVO.

Our retail-boxed review drive of the SSD 850 EVO shipped with just the drive, a software install disc, and a paper warranty pamphlet and quick showtime guide...

Samsung often besides sells its SSDs for a slight premium as laptop or desktop upgrade kits, which might comprise a 3.5-inch-bay bulldoze bracket and/or a SATA-to-USB adapter for drive cloning. So exist on the lookout for those if yous need accessories with your bulldoze.

Software

It's too worth pointing out that Samsung's Magician four and Information Migration Software—for tweaking, migrating, and optimizing your drive—comes bundled with the drive on the installer disc. It remains by far the most bonny and intuitive SSD suite we've used. Now, mind y'all, yous don't have to install it, and Intel offers some dainty (though not quite equally polished) SSD software, also. But Samsung'south SSD software is well worth taking the time to install and try—even if you don't think you need it.

One reason why: A primal feature baked into Samsung'southward Magician suite is RAPID Way, which caches information in unused parts of your organization'southward RAM...

RAPID Mode can make use of 1GB to 4GB of organization RAM, depending on how much yous have. Functioning junkies and tweakers may go a kick out of RAPID Mode, and in the SSD 850 EVO, the software can calibration the amount of RAM information technology uses up and downwardly dynamically. It certainly looks impressive in benchmark testing, though the numbers it kicks back are much bigger proportionally than the actual real-world improvement you'll feel in using it solar day-to-twenty-four hours. (For instance, it improved the SSD 850 EVO'due south score on the PCMark vii Secondary Storage Test, which we'll discuss on the next page, by only about 8 percent.) Though information technology's worth playing with, we don't consider RAPID Style a deal-making selling bespeak or something we'd switch on and apply all the time.

That'due south because modern operating systems already enshroud files in memory on their own. And storing significant numbers of in-progress files in RAM can be risky if your organization happens to suddenly lose power. (Those running desktops with UPS-style battery backups might experience more secure enabling it.) Samsung states in one of its white papers for the drive that "RAPID Style was designed to not add together any additional take a chance to the user or arrangement data, even in the event of power loss." Merely if you're at all worried about file loss, we'd notwithstanding recommend keeping it disabled, at least when you're working on documents or other productivity tasks. The bulldoze is impressively fast enough on its own that most users won't see a pronounced real-world advantage from using RAPID Mode, in virtually cases. And in the areas where it could make the most divergence (reading and writing huge multi-gigabyte files), the system isn't probable to have enough free RAM available to cache those files unless y'all have 16GB or more of memory.

In our Operation department, coming up, we didn't nautical chart the drive using RAPID Mode, because on near benchmark tests, the results current of air up showing essentially the speed of the RAM, rather than the speed of the SSD itself. Information technology's a dainty feature worth trying out if you buy this or another contempo Samsung drive, only we wouldn't call information technology a brand-or-intermission one.

The rest of the Magician suite, though, is indeed a value-add. The top-level menu of the Sorcerer utility is as good an SSD command center equally we have seen...

From here, you can admission the RAPID Fashion control panel, as well as submenus for drive information security and tweaking the default overprovisioning on the drive, among a smattering of data-erase and drive-benchmarking tools.

The overprovisioning bill of fare is specially interesting. Hither, you can alter the corporeality of drive space set up aside for replacing worn cells, and other maintenance tasks. (The default setting is ten percent.)

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Too, the depth of the drive-security options exceeds what you become with well-nigh other mainstream drives, and it'due south piece of cake to activate hither...

Of notation, support for the hardware-based OPAL security protocol from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is nowadays, for encrypting the drive. That support is not a given on the SSD front end, though we take seen it on some contempo drives, such as the Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series.

Performance Testing

If you're new to the world of solid-state drives, a few things are worth noting when it comes to operation.

For starters: If you're upgrading from a standard spinning hard drive, any modern SSD will be a huge improvement, speeding up boot times and making programs launch faster. But today's high-stop SSDs make utilize of a specific interface, SATA iii.0 (also called "6Gbps SATA"), to achieve maximum speed versus older, simply still mutual, SATA 2 ports, which top out at 300MB per 2d. We exam all our SSDs on a SATA 3.0-equipped testbed PC to show their total performance abilities. To get the most speed possible from mod drives, you'll need a system with SATA iii.0 capability, as well.

If your arrangement is based on a contempo Intel Haswell, Ivy Span, or Sandy Span chipset (or ane of the newer AMD chipsets), there's a very good chance that your laptop or desktop has the newer, faster interface. Be sure before buying, though. If your system doesn't accept a SATA 3.0 interface, there's piffling point in paying a premium for a drive with the maximum possible performance. SATA 3.0-capable drives will work just fine with previous-generation SATA ports, but there's scant reason to pay extra for bulldoze speed that your system can't take advantage of. A basic drive will work simply too, in that SATA three.0-less scenario.

One note earlier nosotros jump into testing: In the interest of getting the best possible functioning out of our test drives, nosotros've shifted to testing with Intel'southward Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver installed, rather than the standard Microsoft AHCI driver we've used in the past. In the charts below, all drives were tested or retested with Intel'southward RST drivers installed. (In testing a host of drives with both drivers for comparison purposes, though, nosotros've seldom seen a difference of more than 5 percent on any given exam.)

10GB File Copy Exam

Our 10GB File Copy Examination employs a Figurer Shopper-specific test binder that nosotros use with every SSD nosotros test. The 10GB worth of files are in a variety of sizes and types (including, but not exclusively, JPGs, Word documents, and video files).

In this real-world test, we showtime copy the examination binder onto the SSD, which has been secure-erased and reformatted before the process begins. We then brand a folder-to-folder copy of the file on the SSD itself, and time the process. We use the software TeraCopy to manage the file transfer and time the process precisely.

The SSD 850 EVO landed a second behind its predecessor on this first test, but its score was yet just a couple seconds behind the fastest drive we've tested here. In contrast, Crucial's 512GB MX100 trailed 18 seconds backside the new EVO.

PCMark vii Secondary Storage Test

The Secondary Storage Test is a subtest under Futuremark's larger PCMark 7 benchmarking suite. It employs a dissimilar approach to drive testing than pure speed tests similar Equally-SSD, which we'll go to in a moment. PCMark seven runs a series of scripted tasks typical of everyday PC operation and disk accesses. It measures app launches, video-conversion tasks, paradigm import, operations in Windows Media Center, and more. The issue is a proprietary numeric score; the higher the number, the better.

This score is useful in gauging everyday, general functioning versus other drives. Note that, like with our 10GB File Copy Test, we secure-erase all SSDs using the utility Parted Magic before running PCMark 7's Secondary Storage Test.

The SSD 850 EVO impressed on this test, landing right behind the SSD 850 Pro. The latter was only outscored here past the Plextor M6e M.2 drive, which isn't hindered by the limitations of the SATA 3.0 interface.

Equally-SSD Sequential Read & Write Speeds

The AS-SSD benchmark utility is designed specifically to test solid-state drives (as opposed to traditional hard drives). It reports a diverseness of scores, but the ones we are reporting in these ii charts post-obit measure out a drive's ability to read and write large files. Drive makers ofttimes quote these speeds, as a theoretical maximum, on the packaging or in advert. Sequential speeds are important if you're working with very big files for image or video editing, or you play lots of games with large levels that accept a long fourth dimension to load with traditional difficult drives. Once more, we secure-erase all SSDs using the utility Parted Magic before running this test.

In this test of large-file reads, charted above, the SSD 850 EVO looked less impressive than on most of our tests, though information technology was still no slouch. It substantially tied the terminal-generation SSD 840 EVO, while trailing Crucial's less-expensive MX100 drives by 5MB to 8MB per second. If you're constantly working with large files in a professional product environs, you might want to consider paying more for the SSD 850 Pro, which did measurably improve here.

Switching over to large-file writes, the SSD 850 EVO looked a lot better, landing well-nigh the top of our test pack. It minimally trailed last year'south SSD 840 EVO, but it outpaced Crucial'south MX100 bulldoze.

Not all benchmark tests bring the aforementioned results, however, fifty-fifty when they're meant to test the same thing. That was evidenced by another sequential read/write trial nosotros ran, using the Physical Disks subtest in the SiSoft Sandra system testing suite.

SiSoft Sandra Sequential Read & Write Tests

The Physical Disks exam in SiSoft Sandra measures, among other things, sequential-read and -write performance, like As-SSD does in role. Here, the SSD 850 EVO scored shut to its Samsung-rated sequential read speed of 540MB per 2d, tying the pricier SSD 850 Pro and edging slightly ahead of the MX100 drives.

Switching then to big-file writes, the SSD 850 EVO scored the same on the SiSoft Sandra test as information technology did on the Every bit-SSD examination.

That's still a solid 6MB per second ahead of the 512GB model of Crucial's MX100 bulldoze.

AS-SSD 4K Read & Write Speeds

This exam, also a part of the SSD-centric AS-SSD benchmark, measures a drive'south power to traffic modest files. Oft disregarded, 4K functioning, particularly 4K write performance, is quite important when information technology comes to kicking speed and program launch times.

When an SSD is booting up and launching programs, many tiny files get accessed and edited ofttimes. The faster your drive can write and read these kinds of files (especially dynamic link library, or DLL, files in Windows), the faster your OS will "feel." Since these small files are accessed much more frequently than large media or game-level files, a drive's operation on this exam will have a greater bear on on how fast a drive feels in everyday apply.

When reading small files, the SSD 850 EVO excelled, landing at the superlative of the charts. It was also more than 10MB per sceond faster on this exam than Crucial's MX100 drives (at both capacities we tested), and even 8MB per second ahead of the pricier SSD 850 Pro...

On the more than-important pocket-sized-file write examination, the SSD 850 EVO was only bested by Plextor's M6e M.2 drive, which isn't express by the SATA interface. The 256GB model of the Crucial MX100 managed to necktie the SSD 850 EVO on this examination, which is impressive. The college-capacity 512GB MX100 model, though, was less impressive, falling more than 12MB per second behind the new EVO drive...

On the whole, the SSD 850 EVO is a very impressive performer with pocket-size files. Even most enthusiast-class SATA drives couldn't beat it in our testing.

Decision

In most performance aspects, the SSD 850 EVO came close to or even bested the SSD 850 Pro—which is still the fastest SATA drive nosotros've tested to date. The SSD 850 Pro only decisively trumped this latest EVO bulldoze on warranty—and fifty-fifty there, the SSD 850 EVO'southward five-year warranty beats that of almost other mainstream drives past a couple of years.

You would call up that all of that, taken together, would brand the SSD 850 EVO an easy recommend for most upgraders—and, if you're looking specifically for a high-performance bulldoze in the 120GB capacity range, this is definitely the ane nosotros'd tout of the current lot.

The problem is, we have only seen suggested pricing for the SSD 850 EVO at this point, so it's difficult to judge it from a best-value perspective notwithstanding. (Samsung intends to ship information technology worldwide after in December, so pricing will actually only shake out on this drive in early 2015.) At the SSD 850 EVO's debut, Crucial's MX100 cost significantly less than the EVO drives' listing prices, while still delivering very good performance, at least in the 512GB and 256GB MX100 capacities we tested. So yous'll want to exist sure to check pricing carefully before buying. While the SSD 850 EVO is a measurably faster drive in most general-apply scenarios, you aren't likely to notice functioning differences between these ii without breaking out some benchmark utilities.

If yous tin save $seventy or and so by opting for the Crucial drive (equally you tin as of this writing), that drive is nonetheless worth considering—especially if yous aren't a media professional or otherwise working on tasks where the maximum possible bulldoze speed is paramount to yous. The SSD 850 EVO's longer warranty is appreciated, and worth the price difference if you're thinking of getting the 1TB capacity. But iii years down the road, if either drive were to fail, replacing a 250GB or 500GB bulldoze with another of the same capacity won't exist a major expense, because how SSD prices continue to slide.

Yet, nosotros have a strong hunch that the SSD 850 EVO's price will exist more competitive once it hits online and in-store retailers, and early adopters take snatched up the initial stock. We don't encounter that happening before January 2015, but if it does, and the SSD 850 EVO winds up even $20 or $xxx in a higher place the best-value drives of the moment (the Crucial MX100 and Samsung's own SSD 840 EVO), it volition be the best drive for most mainstream buyers. Information technology is, later on all, i of the fastest SATA-based drives y'all can buy, second at this point only to Samsung's own SSD 850 Pro. And the software rocks.

For desktop-PC users who have purchased an SSD in the last year or ii, though, and are by and large happy with current operation, this is no knee-jerk upgrade. We'd suggest waiting a bit until we see more than M.2 and SATA Limited drives, which break past SATA 3.0'south bandwidth bottleneck. As impressive every bit the SSD 850 EVO and the SSD 850 Pro are, they aren't that much faster than most other recent, well-received SATA drives.

Of course, if you lot want to use an G.two or SATA Express bulldoze, you'll either need to buy a new X79 or X99 motherboard, or opt for a bulldoze like Plextor's M6e M.2 PCIe, which works with desktops and comes equally a drive mounted on a PCI Express card, which plugs into a spare PCI Express slot. Samsung, too, intends to release Thou.2 versions of the SSD 850 EVO in 2015, then if your system is equipped for K.2 today, or you mean to upgrade the mainboard, y'all might want to await until one of those solutions comes bachelor.

In the concurrently, though, the Samsung SSD 850 EVO is as good every bit it comes in consumer-form SATA storage upgrades.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/samsung-ssd-850-evo-500gb

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