The Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on July 11, 2016 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The 4TB Samsung 850 EVO set new highs for a few performance sub-tests, but ultimately the only important record it breaks is for its storage capacity. On that front it is without equal in the consumer market and even among enterprise SATA drives higher capacities are only available from drives that are more than 7mm thick.
Samsung's new 256Gb 48-layer V-NAND chips made it straightforward for them to create this product, but it doesn't quite seem necessary. We were already quite impressed with their 2TB drives, and they still don't face any serious competition. The 4TB 850 EVO is a stark illustration of Samsung's seemingly insurmountable lead in the marketplace, but it is far too expensive for any ordinary desktop or NAS use. There simply aren't many consumers who can afford this much SSD, but if you're a consumer with the budget for 4TB of SSD storage the 850 EVO can deliver it in a single 2.5" drive with none of the complexity of RAID. The drive may also be very welcome in the professional video space, but the relatively low write endurance rating of 300TB (75 total drive writes) could scare off those customers.
Putting aside the concerns about the suitability of this drive for today's market, it is a good sign for the future. Samsung is finally putting their new generation of 3D NAND on shelves in large quantities. As promised it doesn't seem to bring any new performance issues, but a SATA drive can't really prove that conclusively. The improvements to power efficiency are modest but real and every bit of that will be welcome as the 48-layer V-NAND finds its way into the rest of the product line. It is hard to tell whether the new V-NAND will be pushing prices much lower in the short term, but it looks like it will at least be competitive with what's already out there. Samsung is well positioned to continue their dominance for another round.
The 4TB 850 EVO also gives us another light push towards a future where mechanical hard drives are gone from the consumer market. Building a SSD that can entirely displace hard drives is now possible using controllers and DRAM that are cheap commodity parts. (SSDs larger than 4TB could be made using two controllers plus a RAID controller at the cost of some peak performance, a technique used by drives like the 2TB Mushkin Reactor TC.) The per-GB price of NAND flash is the only front on which SSDs still need to improve; SSDs have far surpassed mechanical hard drives in performance and power consumption and have caught up in terms of capacity and density.
The performance of the 4TB 850 EVO also makes it clear that there is even less need for a 4TB 850 Pro. An MLC counterpart simply isn't needed to reach the highest speeds that can be expected of a SATA drive, because 3D TLC drive done right and in such abundant capacity is plenty fast. The only reason Samsung should bother shipping a 4TB 850 Pro is if they're going to give it a vastly higher write endurance rating for a small price premium. Otherwise, they should save that new 3D MLC for the PCIe drives.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
145 Comments
View All Comments
Impulses - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I think it might take longer than that, the 1TB model hasn't budged much in the year since I bought 2, and neither has the 2TB after it's release... A 4TB faces even less direct competition than those do. I guess 3D NAND from others will eventually start to challenge Samsung tho, but it sure has taken them a while.mapesdhs - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
I remember SanDisk saying not all that long ago that they wanted to release an 8TB model, but everything seems to have slowed down since then.I wonder sometimes if all of these companies are not really pushing the tech as fast as it could go because all of them in the meantime can make some decent money selling the various inbetween capacities.
Really it's kinda ridiculous that it's still possible to buy 128GB and lesser models, they're such price ripoffs. I remember that the 850 EVO 250GB went as low as 53 UKP over the xmas break, but now most places have it up past 75, while plenty of 120GB models are more than 50.
Just wish the public would stop buying the overpriced lower grade stuff.
Magichands8 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
And the reason this isn't being released with U.2 would be.....? Oh that's right! There isn't a reason. It was intentionally gimped with SATA performance. Great job Samsung! And it's only 4 times more expensive than it should be! Yep, I'm very glad that Optane is getting closer. I realize it isn't going to be super cheap at the start but it will be very interesting to see how it changes the landscape and what affect it has on the SSD market.Impulses - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
More than likely they'll be faster, more expensive per GB, and smaller... :p AFAIK it'll compete with PCI-E & M.2 drives so it'll be priced accordingly, and that's ignoring that it'll likely require a whole new platform etc.Looking at a large capacity EVO as a purposeful gimping is very odd, the controller was originally designed and has always been used as a SATA controller.
You could maybe make that claim of a 2TB 950 Pro or something (if and when it happens)... But it's all but impossible to know how this series' controller would do on a different interface, or if that's even possibly.
Magichands8 - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
It's laziness is what it is. And an attempt to milk more out of their SATA controller design. It's time though for the older technology to go the way of the Dodo. For years we've been hobbled by SATA and it doesn't make sense to me to have huge capacities and slow performance anymore. I'm glad to see Samsung releasing such a high capacity SSD but I'm almost insulted by the fact that so many "new" SSDs are being released based upon older technology and crippled by all of its limitations.Impulses - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
A vast majority of people don't need anything better than SATA, so the R&D to go forth is balanced against that I'm sure... Like it or not, anything PCI-E/M.2/U.2 is still a niche right now... And it'd be a tiny niche if M.2 didn't also happen to be a decent form factor for laptops.Enthusiasts and power users are basically lucky that the mobile sector kinda spurred some performance innovation for once even if it's also kinda casting a shadow on U.2. Samsung's in it to maximize profits like anyone else...
mapesdhs - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Unfortunately the manufacturers know that at least for a while the niche status of tech like M.2 will allow them to charge much more for such products, pulling in people who can afford it and are willing to pay the premium. In theory competition should solve this, but sometimes I do wonder about possible pricing collusion when certain products seem to go through a particularly fishy looking price fluctuation.AnnonymousCoward - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
Gimped with SATA? You do realize everything is CPU-bound unless you're copying to a RAM drive or running a benchmark, right? If you want to speed things up, buy a 6700K and OC it.KoolAidMan1 - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
I can't wait until price per GB drops some more. Its actually very affordable by that metric but I'd still want to wait for it to drop to around $800 before buying one myself.Impulses - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
It'll be a while, the 2TB is like $600 and has barely dropped by $100 since launching last year... Once those hit $500 or less I could be in for one, unless the 4TB's price has also budged a ton by then. I think the largest capacity always sees the smallest dips tho, specially in this case where competition is non existent.