The Samsung SSD 850 EVO mSATA/M.2 Review
by Kristian Vättö on March 31, 2015 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
From a technological perspective, the new 850 EVO drives do not bring anything new to the table since it's essentially the 2.5" 850 EVO in a smaller form factor, but what it does bring to the market is more selection in mSATA and M.2 form factors using the SATA protocols. There still aren't too many mSATA/M.2 retail drives available, so the 850 EVO adds a lot of value to that segment because it's by far the fastest mSATA/M.2 SSD and in general the 850 EVO is one of the highest performing SATA drives on the market.
With that said, I do have some concerns regarding the 1TB model and its performance. Especially the IO consistency with 50-second pauses is worrying. While that won't have any major impact on very light workloads, anything that taxes the drive a bit more may run into the issue, which is basically that the drive stops for up to dozens of seconds (i.e. your system freezes). Until Samsung fixes that, I would advise against buying the 1TB version unless you have a very light workload (web browsing, email, etc.). I suspect it's fixable through a firmware update, but I'll have to wait for Samsung's reply to be sure of that.
| Amazon Price Comparison (3/29/2015) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/250/256GB | 480/500/512GB | 1TB | |
| Samsung 850 EVO mSATA | $80 | $130 | $230 | $450 |
| Samsung 850 EVO M.2 | $80 | $130 | $230 | - |
| Samsung 840 EVO mSATA | $89 | $150 | $228 | $429 |
| Crucial M550 mSATA | $172 | $107 | $184 | - |
| Crucial M500 M.2 | $88 | $129 | $244 | - |
| Crucial MX200 mSATA | - | $120 | $213 | - |
| Crucial MX200 M.2 | - | $120 | $226 | - |
| Plextor M6M mSATA | $76 | $133 | $280 | - |
| Mushkin Atlas Deluxe mSATA | $65 | $108 | $183 | - |
The 850 EVO mSATA/M.2 is already available on Amazon and the pricing appears to be fairly competitive. It's not the cheapest mSATA/M.2 drive around, but the premium isn't that significant when taking 850 EVO's feature set into account (5-year warranty, hardware encryption etc.).
All in all, the 850 EVO presents another option to users who are looking for an mSATA or M.2 SSD. It's equipped with the same extensive feature set as its 2.5" sibling, the performance is good and the pricing is fair. As long as Samsung is able to fix the 1TB mSATA on a timely manner, I have no reason not to recommend the 850 EVO. After all, it's still the only mSATA with 1TB capacity.
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WackyDan - Saturday, April 4, 2015 - link
Eh... Nope. These won't work in the ThinkPads.blanarahul - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Hopefully, this drive will put an end to the mSATA/M.2 versions of the 840 non-EVO that companies are shipping in their laptops.Samus - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
DoH! I just paid $20 more for the M550 (basically the MX100) 512GB M2 drive, which is double-sided and needs to be crammed into my laptop :\kgh00007 - Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - link
Hey, is there any chance you could fill one of these m.2 drives with data, power it off for a month then check the read speeds when you power it back on?I need some sort of evidence that this TLC V-nand does not have the same issues as the TLC in the 840 EVO.
Otherwise I'm not going to be able to buy one of these!
Cheers!
goodyes - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
What the hell does not the charts compares with 840 ev msata ? Bad numbers Why not true sequential test ??And this site posting SUCKS, Why in the world I cannot use my facebook or so login, Did you know about disquss ? Get out the absurd captcha that fucking me 30 times or so trying to get a magical potion to know what the words saying,. THIS IS NOT ADVANCE IN TECH THIS IS TRASH
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
This is the third review with the new 2015 SSD Suite and I've only had limited time to test drives, hence the lack of 840 EVO in the graphs.goodyes - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
Ya, but results that I have a 1TB 840 msata and write sequential at more than 500MBps around 520max MBps, and now I see than new 850 msata tops at ?? 480MBps ?? cannot be possible what my eyes look, AND WHY THE HELL NO ONE REVIEWER COMPARE With olders 840 msata, so I must think that all of you guys are a paid reviewers and you get money from samsung, if not, YOU MUST compare to older modelcgorange - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
Other than providing samples, I can assure you that Samsung doesn't pay Anandtech to review its productsEkitrak - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
The Final Words page has 2 entries of "Samsung 840 EVO mSATA" on the Amazon Price Comparison. I'm guessing this is an error and one of them is supposed to be the Sata III version?Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, April 1, 2015 - link
I'm not seeing this -- maybe you accidentally mixed up the 850 EVO mSATA and 840 EVO mSATA as they are both in the table (or maybe this was already fixed by another editor).