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.
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mapesdhs - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
As long as they're able to sell the drives ok at current prices, it won't change. Indeed, if there's a demand spike then prices can rise, for all vendors (others catch on pretty quick if it's obvious consumers are willing to pay more than they'd estimated).This happened a few years ago when 256GB SSDs were just beginning to approach the 100 UKP mark for the first time. One particular store started offering Samsung 830 models for a good price (something like 120 each, I forget offhand), they sold *hundreds* of them in just a couple of weeks. No doubt Samsung realised there was simply no need to reduce the current pricing and infact it went back up very soon afterwards, as did other vendors' prices aswell, returning to 140 to 150 UKP levels by the following Spring.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Just checked, the 830 256GB offer price in late 2012 was 130 each (from ebuyer IIRC); I bought two. I think they sold well over a thousand units.jameskatt - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Why would I want to spend $1600 on a 4 TB SSD that only lasts 75 full drive rewrites? That limited drive life makes this an expensive disposable drive. The Samsung 850 Pro has a 10 year warranty. This 4TB 850 EVO won't even last a few years with its limited lifespan. It is useless for video work. You may end up losing valuable video if this dies suddenly.Notmyusualid - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
Yes, this was my first thought too.I went back and checked the Anandtech article for the 850 Pro (rocking 512GB here), and it says 150TB of Endurance, whereas this has 300TB of endurance. Hmmm, the TLC thing still feels wrong to me. Both my 840 Evos performed SO horribly I got rid, and the 850 Pro just so different. And so,my SSD failures to date:
1 x OCZ Indillux shite thing. I'm sure you all remember that drive.
1 x Intel 160GB G1 (doa), replacement strong to this day.
1 x Kingston 60GB whatever
1 x Kingston 120GB whatever
2 x Patriot Wildfire 240GB each (failed ~18 months apart)
I also have an 840 Evo 500GB that I got for 'free', which is giving me no problems, but is used as a 'Steam' disk only, as I in no way trust TLC.
Make a 4TB Pro at $699, and I'll take two of 'em.
Impulses - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
I've been pretty darn lucky... My desktop progression:80GB Intel X25-M
40GB Intel X25-V (for a netbook)
2x 128GB Samsung 830 (ran separately then later RAID)
2x 1TB Samsung 850 EVO + 256GB SM951
0 issues :P
mapesdhs - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
It does vary hugely. I have lots of SSDs I use for benching & system testing, including several dozen OCZ (maybe 50 SSDs total). Only had two problems so far, a SanDisk that went weird during a fw update (which thankfully recovered after a full power disconnect) and a Samsung 840 250GB that went fubar last week for grud knows what reason (stops any system to which it's connected from booting properly). Ironic that I've had a Samsung fail before any of the OCZs I use.It probably helps that the first thing I do when receiving an SSD is make sure the fw is up to date, which in the case of my numerous Vertex2E/3s means they won't be affected by any earlier problematic bugs. Indeed, I've had several V2Es running in UNIX systems for years at a time with no problems (V2E is ideal for this as it was optimised for OSs that don't support TRIM, ie. back when XP was still common).
Notmyusualid - Tuesday, July 19, 2016 - link
I could also have added 1x Intel X25-E 64GB still going strong to this day too.Notmyusualid - Tuesday, July 19, 2016 - link
Sorry, I left out, make 'em at 4TB @ 699, and I'll not only take two of 'em, I'll RAID1 them! Given they are TLC...vladimirovich - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
$1500 for this TLC shit, enjoy!! :)azrael- - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
Isn't there an error in the specification chart? As far as I know only the lower capacity drives up to 500 GB use the MGX controller. The 1 TB drive uses the MEX controller. Unless something has changed...