The Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on July 11, 2016 10:00 AM ESTSequential Read Performance
The sequential read test requests 128kB 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, and the drive is filled before the test begins. 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.
The 4TB 850 EVO scores slightly better than the 2TB for sequential reads, but it is still a hair slower than the fastest drives.
Samsung's large drives draw a lot of power during the sequential read test, but at least the 4TB 850 EVO improves over the 2TB and 1TB 850 EVOs.
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The 4TB 850 EVO does not suffer from the modestly impaired QD1 performance of the 2TB model, but for the rest of the test the 4TB is slightly slower than the other two.
Sequential Write Performance
The sequential write test writes 128kB 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, and the drive is filled before the test begins. 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.
The 4TB 850 EVO manages to just barely break the record of the 1TB 850 Pro for the fastest sequential write speeds at low queue depths.
With the fastest performance and the fourth-lowest power usage, the 4TB comes out on top for efficiency.
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The 4TB 850 EVO shows substantially better QD1 performance and slightly better QD2 performance than the 2TB 850 EVO while having power consumption that is more in line with the 850 Pro.
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SetiroN - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I mean I understand and agree that Samsungs are the better drives to buy at lower capacities right now, but if you needed 4TB or more you just have to be silly to spend $700 more.Let me say that again: $700.
Oxford Guy - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
"I can't honestly think of any good reason to buy something other than samsung SSD"1) People who were burned by the very poor steady state performance (according to one professional review site) of the original 840 120 GB.
2) People who were burned by the problems with the 840 EVO and who aren't impressed by the kludgy work-around of re-writing data again and again.
3) People who haven't been impressed with generations of BS power consumption specs. It's only recently that we're now seeing ratings for read/write power consumption. Prior to that, though, there generations/years of Samsung SSDs with ".17 watt" power consumption nonsense. This was not only the only thing on their site for SSDs that used plenty of watts when working (like the 830 and 840) — consumers even advised each other in the comments in places like this to choose Samsung because of the very low power consumption (even though the 840 topped the chart here, as I recall, for consuming the most watts when writing).
But, that said, the 850 seems to be the first decent TLC SSD so I'm glad the company has made significant improvement.
Impulses - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I guess I got lucky, went straight from 830s to 850 EVOs & SM951, have yet to get burnt. Though to be honest, every other SSD OEM out there (including Intel) had at least one catastrophic scenario like the 840's (often worse, resulting in data loss), if not several such scenarios.I'm not completely excusing Samsung, because their handling of the situation wasn't optimal (went from trying to brush it under that rug to a kludgy fix that didn't even cover the non EVO)... But I'm also not holding it against them.
Palorim12 - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
1. They released a fix it a week or two ago.2. completely fixed in April of 2015. Doesn't constantly rewrite data, the new algorithm itself fixes the read speeds and the idle write thing they have is a just in case the algorithm can't fix it.
3. Use desktops, so can't say anything about power consumption.
romrunning - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Sure, the *1TB* Ultra II is cheaper per GB. But show me where I can buy a 4TB Ultra II, and then you'll have an apples-to-apples comparison.ddriver - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Well, you can't, but you can buy 4 1TB, put them in RAID 0 and get 2 GB/sec vs 500 MB/sec from the EVO.So almost the same capacity (it is 960 GB really) at 4 times the speed (and 4 times less reliability ;) for 2/3 of the cost.
quiksilvr - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
That is only a viable option if you have a desktop computer or a Thunderbolt external drive enclosure. An initial price of $1499 is a lot but 4TB is ridiculous. And if that price drops to $999, that would be even more bonkers. I remember the days when having just 1TB was that price. The fact that we are at 4 times the capacity for the same price and WAY better performance is nuts.TemjinGold - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
And 4 times the headaches having to deal with the RAID setup.mapesdhs - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
And the reliability issue of one device failure trashing all the data, though one could get round this by using four 2TB in RAID10 which wouldn't be so bad, but still a lot of ports, etc.Gigaplex - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I'd also need a RAID controller with 4 spare SATA ports.