The Samsung 750 EVO (120GB & 250GB) SSD Review: A Return To Planar NAND
by Billy Tallis on April 22, 2016 8:00 AM ESTRandom Read Performance
The random read test requests 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test spans the entire drive, which is filled before the test starts. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
All the Samsung drives are crowding the top of the chart for low queue depth random read speeds, and the 750 EVO is way ahead of any other planar TLC drive here.
With power usage in the middle of the pack, the 750 EVO and 850 EVO are some of the most power-efficient drives on this test, but drives like the Plextor M6V are still at the top of the efficiency ranking.
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In addition to offering great performance at low queue depths, the 750 EVO scales up to reach higher speeds at QD32 than any non-Samsung drive, without power consumption getting out of hand.
Random Write Performance
The random write test writes 4kB blocks and tests queue depths ranging from 1 to 32. The queue depth is doubled every three minutes, for a total test duration of 18 minutes. The test is limited to a 16GB portion of the drive, and the drive is empty save for the 16GB test file. The primary score we report is an average of performances at queue depths 1, 2 and 4, as client usage typically consists mostly of low queue depth operations.
Taking capacity into account, the 750 EVO provides much better random write speeds than any other planar TLC drive, and the 250GB model is competitive against many MLC drives.
The 750 EVO is high-performing for a TLC drive but at the cost of requiring more power than most planar TLC drives and much more than the 850 EVO.
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The 120GB 750 EVO shows almost no scaling with queue depth, while the 250GB needs a queue depth of at least two to reach full performance. By contrast, the 120GB 850 EVO shows a little bit of performance scaling from QD1 to QD2 and the 250GB 850 EVO doesn't hit full performance until QD4.
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Shadow7037932 - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
The prices aren't competitive. The Ultra II in particular tends to go on sale rather often for around $50.Shadow7037932 - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
Also, if it's anything like the price drop we saw with the 850 EVOs, this could drop down to ~$50 or so in a few months I think.barleyguy - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
This drive hasn't been out long enough to know what price it will go on sale for. So I consider any comments on pricing pretty irrelevant.Outside of that, there are only 3 brands of SSD I trust my data to, which is Intel, Crucial/Micron, and Samsung. I'll pay more for those 3 brands than I will other brands, because of reliability.
AkulaClass - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
As 250GB low cost I would grab a SanDisk Ultra II.barleyguy - Friday, April 22, 2016 - link
8 of the 48 reviews of that drive on NewEgg are "worked great until it died in a month and I lost my data". As I said in another post, Intel, Crucial, and Samsung are IMO on a different tier of reliability than everybody else.Shadow7037932 - Saturday, April 23, 2016 - link
I like how you're saying Samsung there without considering the issues they've had with the 840. Out of all three you mentioned, only Intel has had solid SSDs since the first gen.barleyguy - Saturday, April 23, 2016 - link
I actually own an 840 Evo in my daughter's laptop. The issues with it never involved data loss or "early death", only degraded performance. Even in its degraded performance mode it still feels faster than a hard drive. And the patches they issued to "fix" it work pretty well to restore it back to SSD-like performance.So, in short, I still trust Samsung on the SSD front way more than Sandisk.
Though I don't disagree that Intel makes excellent SSDs. They're the way to go for a "critical main desktop" type application.
andrewaggb - Sunday, April 24, 2016 - link
I was going to say that as well. I have an 840 evo in my machine and I haven't lost any data. I regret purchasing it... but it works. The only SSD I've had die so far was a Kingston V100. Still have a couple intel 320 series ssd's running strong, a couple sandisk ones (don't recall the model numbers) that are working and a crucial M500 that is working.Dwedit - Sunday, April 24, 2016 - link
I had the old Intel X25-M, and it had a catastrophic failure where the disk name changed to "BAD CONTEXT" and size changed to 8MB.K_Space - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
X25-M (version 2) still going strong here just not as a main drive since 80Gb is puny. I have both SD Ultra II (960Gb) and 2x Extreme Pro (480Gb) going with no problems. The Extreme Pro was purchased straight after Anadtech glowing review particularly with its 10 years warranty. Not sure what the warranty is for the Ultra II but wouldn't be surprised if its 5+. For every review that says: my SSD died, you'll get a "my SSD is alive & well" so take em with a pinch of salt. It all depends on usage scenario and user expertise and we know how variable that can be.