Samsung SSD 850 EVO (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on December 8, 2014 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The 850 EVO is yet another showcase of Samsung's engineering talent and truth to be told there is a lot of good in the 850 EVO. By combining TLC with V-NAND technology, Samsung is eliminating any and all concerns that people might have had about the endurance of TLC NAND and to back that up Samsung is rating the 850 EVO's endurance higher than the MLC drives of most manufacturers. I never considered the endurance of TLC NAND to be an issue for average client workloads, but I saw many people who were doubtful about the sufficiency of 1,000 P/E cycles, so with twice that in TLC V-NAND I believe many will and should stop treating TLC as a second class citizen.
Not only is the endurance higher, but the 850 EVO's performance is also better compared to its predecessor. In our 2011 Storage Benches the 850 EVO matches up with the 850 Pro and is hence one of the fastest SATA 6Gbps SSDs for typical client workloads. In very heavy workloads, illustrated by our 2013 Storage Bench, the 850 EVO does okay, but it's clear that it's outperformed by drives that are more optimized for such usage.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (12/7/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/250/256GB | 480/500/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| Samsung SSD 850 EVO (MSRP) | $100 | $150 | $270 | $500 |
| Samsung SSD 850 Pro | $105 | $180 | $320 | $630 |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $85 | $125 | $230 | $440 |
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | - | $150 | $328 | $531 |
| SanDisk Ultra II | $80 | $110 | $220 | $420 |
| Crucial MX100 | $70 | $113 | $215 | - |
| Crucial M550 | $85 | $163 | $265 | $450 |
| Plextor M6S | $80 | $158 | $290 | - |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $130 | $220 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $75 | $130 | $240 | - |
| OCZ ARC 100 | $70 | $100 | $215 | - |
There is one huge 'but' however – the price. The 850 EVO is a very competitive drive in performance and features, but neither of these warrants the premium Samsung is charging. As I've said before, there are only two main segments in the SSD market that I recognize, which are the value/mainstream and high-end/enthusiast segments.
For the value segment, the key consideration is the price because these are typically users who don't push their systems to the limits and thus shouldn't pay a premium for a performance increase that is likely to be negligible for their usage. Our Light Workload suite highlights this pretty well because the difference between most drives is on the order of 10-20% and while a possible 10% increase in performance would be worth $5, $10 and maybe even $20 to some users, it's definitely not worth the ~$50 Samsung is charging for the 850 EVO over Crucial's MX100 and SanDisk's Ultra II for example.
As for the high-end segment, Samsung already has that one covered by the 850 Pro. The 850 EVO, especially at the smaller capacities, isn't fast enough under IO intensive workloads to really compete with the 850 Pro and Extreme Pro. Given that the Extreme Pro can be had for about the same cost (depending on the capacity, of course), I would much rather have that if I was looking for a high-end SSD.
In other words, the 850 EVO falls into the infamous middle-class. It doesn't have an obvious niche in the market because it's too expensive for the value-oriented buyer and it's not fast enough to be considered as a competitive high-end SSD. If Samsung shaved $30 to $50 off the price, the 850 EVO would be competitive against the other value drives because the five-year warranty and Samsung's top-of-the-class software suite add some value, but with the current pricing there are just better options on the market.
A part of me sees that it might have been worthwhile for Samsung to do one more planar NAND shrink to be more competitive in the mainstream segment because right now the 850 EVO is missing that market. While 3D NAND will eventually become more cost efficient as the number of layers increases, we are not there yet. I absolutely love all the performance and endurance benefits V-NAND is bringing to the table, but if the 850 EVO can't even compete with MLC drives in price, that's a bit alarming.
There is still hope that the MSRPs are just conservative and street prices could end up lower. If they don't, while the 850 EVO is clearly the best performing "value" drive, it likely won't see the same sort of success as its predecessor. Samsung also has a strong presence in the OEM desktop and laptop markets, but OEMs may not see enough to sway them over from the 840 EVO if prices are quite a bit higher.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
97 Comments
View All Comments
Kristian Vättö - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
Hi Simon,Sorry for taking a while to respond -- I had to focus on my finals after I got the review done, so I couldn't catch up with all the comments until now.
The 850 EVO is still a SATA 6Gbps design, so there won't be a SATA Express version of it. There may (and likely will) be an M.2 version coming, although that would also be limited to SATA 6Gbps since M.2 can support both SATA and PCIe interfaces. As for the form factors and capacities, it's impossible to say for sure but technically the 2242 form factor could max out at 512GB and the 2280 at 2TB (assuming double-sided PCB and 16x128Gbit dies per package).
However, the SM951/PM951 will be available sometime next year, although it will be limited to OEM channels again (RamCity saves you, again). That's the PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 drive with 3D NAND (SM=MLC, PM=TLC). I don't have any further details at this point, unfortunately.
Regarding other PCIe SSDs, I should know more after CES when I meet with all the companies again and get an update on their schedules, but for now it looks like most designs are aiming at mid-2015 launch.
akula2 - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
850 Pros are my last Samsung SSD products to buy. For the upcoming X99 extreme workstations, I'll to go with:1) SanDisk Extreme Pro 960GB (today $490 vs $600 of 850 Pro). The performance of both SSDs are comparable.
2) Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe 960GB PCI-E SSD: this one decimates all the best SSDs.
3) Intel SSD DC P3700 800GB and 1.6TB models: The King
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - link
This is the problem with Samsung. When they first came into the market, they blew the competition away with incredible performance, reliability, and pricing.The 840 came with TLC, promising superior pricing with good performance, but in fact pricing was out of whack, putting it way above the 830 that had just left the market. Then 840 Pro took over the high end where only fools dare to tread.
The 850 line (Pro and EVO) raise the prices even higher. It's like Samsung thinks they're the Apple of SSD's and can do whatever they want in pricing. To hell with the competition, people will pay whatever they say.
It's a shame. Way back, I got an 830 because it was a great value. This time around? I waited until Black Friday and picked up a Sandisk after waiting a couple of years for Samsung to remove their head from out of their butt. My 480GB Extreme Pro only cost me $185 and it will last me a good long while.
That could have been you, Samsung. I didn't want to put another brand SSD in my machine. I wanted to have only one Samsung Magician. But Samsung pricing is completely absurd.
So, eh, bye bye, Samsung.
Supercell99 - Sunday, December 14, 2014 - link
They acting like Intel with does Xeon chips, except, Samsung actually has other competition with SSD's. Like you, with my next SSD purchase, I will have to look at other companies as Samsung's $/GB vs the competition has continued to get worse.philipma1957 - Thursday, December 11, 2014 - link
I would like a 1.2th ssd that is really 1.5tb with extra provisioning.I would like it to have good 4k random read writes more then anything.
I have 2 1tb ssds and use them for mac minis.
I use external thunderbolt drives and boot with the 1 tb ssd's the drive in the mini is merely a back up for me. I find I could use a little bigger then 1tb for the video recording I do. Still waiting for a bigger ssd.
harrynsally - Saturday, December 27, 2014 - link
Didn't take long for the MSRP to drop. Was on sale at Newegg and I just bought a 250GB 850 EVO for $114 shipped.Although I previously, purchased two Crucial 256GB MX100s, to use in a couple of older laptops, which installed and continue to run flawlessly, wanted to upgrade the HDD in a new laptop.
Was really conflicted in not buying another MX100, but the better performance specification and 5 year warranty won out.
rvb - Monday, January 19, 2015 - link
Has anyone seen info for the write-block and erase-block sizes for the 1TB 850 Pro? I am intending to RAID 4 of them together, and I want to make sure that my RAID's stride-size is a multiple of the larger of those two values. If they are both something small like 4KiB, then pretty much any larger Pow2 value I choose will be fine. But my only other SSD purchase (OCZ Vertex 4) had a WBS of 8KiB and an EBS of 2MiB. In that case, if I'm going to be writing large files to my RAID, then I think it's useful to know that the EBS is so large, so that I can set my RAID stride-size accordingly.Samsung's "data sheet" for the 850 Pro series neglects to give this information... however, I do note that they only quote random-write performance in terms of 4KB transfers, which may imply that at least their WBS is 4KiB. I just wish I knew for certain, and also the EBS ?
mirkogutic - Saturday, January 24, 2015 - link
Hi, i own 2 of the 120GB Samsung EVO 850.Should I put them in RAID 0 or leave them as separate drives?
It seems that Samsung Magician works only when drives are not in RAID mode.
Also, RAPID mode works only on one drive and when not in RAID.
Nilth - Thursday, April 16, 2015 - link
Sorry for the probably dumb question, but isn't the way turbowrite works detrimental for the ssd longevity? If I understood correctly, (almost) ALL the writes are going to pass through the same "x" GB slc buffer. Isn't that partition going to "wear out" son enough?djdownfawl - Thursday, June 4, 2015 - link
@Kristian VättöAs of today's prices Samsung 850 EVO vs the PRO. Would you recommend buying the EVO or the PRO?