The Samsung 860 PRO (512GB And 4TB) SSD Review: Replacing A Legend
by Billy Tallis on January 23, 2018 10:00 AM ESTConclusion
By the numbers, the Samsung 860 PRO is generally the fastest SATA SSD, but the performance doesn't stand out from the crowd. The 860 PRO offers only slight improvements over the performance of the 850 PRO, and the better competing SATA SSDs are now able to perform at or near the level of the Samsung drives. The SATA interface is simply too much of a bottleneck for any SATA drive to distinguish itself with high performance on a broad range of tests. Hitting those limits is now expected from mainstream drives, instead of being an aspirational goal. Which means that while the 860 PRO is launching as the fastest SATA SSD on the market – once again retaining Samsung's traditional dominance of the market – its accomplishments feel mooted by the limitations of the SATA interface and how close the rest of the competition is these days.
The power consumption situation is quite different; there's plenty of room for improvement, and the 860 PRO delivers. The 850 PRO had been looking rather power-hungry lately as other drives approached its performance level without having to sacrifice as much power efficiency. With updated NAND and DRAM and controller, the 860 PRO is much more efficient than the 850 PRO, setting new records on tests where the Samsung drives still rated well, and catching up to most of the competition where the 850 PRO was notably inefficient.
The only aspect in which the Samsung 860 PRO has a clear and large advantage over the competition is the write endurance. The problem is that this does not matter. With the warranty period shortened to 5 years and the rated write endurance increased substantially over the 850 PRO, the 860 PRO's endurance rating comes out to 0.64 drive writes per day. It is genuinely hard to come up with a realistic non-server workload that produces a write volume equivalent to filling the entire drive every business day. Working with uncompressed video can certainly generate the terabytes of data needed to wear down an 860 PRO, but then the SATA bottleneck becomes significant. It may turn out that the only sensible reason to use an 860 PRO would be in a RAID array, and even then enterprise SSDs may offer a better balance of capacity, endurance, per-drive performance and cost.
| SATA SSD Price Comparison | |||||
| 240-275GB | 480-525GB | 960-1050GB | 2TB | 4TB | |
| Samsung 860 PRO (MSRP) | $139.99 (55¢/GB) | $249.99 (49¢/GB) | $479.99 (47¢/GB) | $949.99 (46¢/GB) | $1899.99 (46¢/GB) |
| Samsung 860 EVO (MSRP) | $94.99 (38¢/GB) | $169.99 (34¢/GB) | $329.99 (33¢/GB) | $649.99 (32¢/GB) | $1399.99 (35¢/GB) |
| Samsung 850 EVO | $102.44 (41¢/GB) | $139.99 (28¢/GB) | $299.99 (30¢/GB) | $649.33 (32¢/GB) | $1427.95 (36¢/GB) |
| Samsung 850 PRO | $141.00 (55¢/GB) | $217.99 (43¢/GB) | $429.99 (42¢/GB) | $892.09 (44¢/GB) | |
| Crucial MX500 | $79.99 (32¢/GB) | $134.95 (27¢/GB) | $259.99 (26¢/GB) | $499.99 (25¢/GB) | |
| Crucial BX300 | $87.99 (37¢/GB) | $144.99 (30¢/GB) | |||
| Crucial MX300 | $89.99 (33¢/GB) | $146.99 (28¢/GB) | $267.00 (25¢/GB) | $549.99 (27¢/GB) | |
| SanDisk Ultra 3D | $79.99 (32¢/GB) | $129.99 (26¢/GB) | $249.99 (25¢/GB) | $499.99 (25¢/GB) | |
| WD Blue 3D NAND | $79.99 (32¢/GB) | $139.99 (28¢/GB) | $274.79 (27¢/GB) | $556.00 (28¢/GB) | |
| Toshiba TR200 | $79.99 (33¢/GB) | ||||
| Intel 545s | $99.99 (39¢/GB) | $159.99 (31¢/GB) | |||
For more typical desktop and workstation usage patterns, the high endurance ratings of the Samsung 860 PRO are overkill, and so are the smaller ratings on the 860 EVO. Now that said – and least we see the pendulum swing the other way – having drives with plenty of write endurance is by and large a good thing, if only because it provides plenty of headroom for certain workloads and and some additional options on the market. The flip side of that however is that practically speaking, Samsung is offering a benefit that consumers don't need, and charging a substantial premium for it.
Ultimately the Samsung 860 PRO is a commendable technical achievement; Samsung has pushed the SATA III interface to its limit by having it serve such a powerful SSD, and it's entirely possible we won't see a better desktop SATA SSD ever made. But as SSDs get faster and faster and the SATA interface does not, I would argue that the 860 PRO isn't a very good product, at least not for the desktop SSD market of 2018. The market has moved on, and power users and enthusiasts who want something better than a mainstream SSD are all looking for PCIe SSDs. The Samsung 860 PRO is priced like a PCIe SSD, but offers none of the tangible advantages. And with the prices Samsung is planning on charging for the 860 family, I'm worried that at MSRP, even the 860 EVO is likely to be unconvincing.
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rocky12345 - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Great review as always Thank You. I am happy to see my 850 Pro 512GB drive still hanging in there and able to perform with the big guys still in the Sata based drives that is. I am thinking that when I do my whole platform upgrade in the fall of 2018 I will be picking up a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB drive for my new build and most likely keep my current drive in my current system and pass it all on to my wife I am sure she will like the great speed increase going from a 750GB HDD to the Samsung SSD & well all the other goodies in the system as well.WithoutWeakness - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
If you're building an entire new system in the fall I would seriously recommend moving to a PCIe M.2 drive. The 1TB 960 EVO will blow the 1TB 860 PRO out of the water for the same price. The only trade-off is the shorter warranty (3 years vs 5 years).BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
I would agree with you, except Rocky said he'll be picking up a 960Pro not an 860Pro.lilmoe - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
I weep every time I see those prices... F'ing ridiculous.imaheadcase - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Only after you go over 512gig. These prices are pretty tame compared to when the old version came out without the higher end models. You would be paying $500 for that entry one for 256gig.Considering that most people really don't need more than 512gig or even 256g for the average users its pretty nice price. Media is what takes most space on drives, and most stream it or have on separate drive that is bigger.
lilmoe - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
It gets on my nerves to see price actually *increase* per GB for the higher capacities instead of the opposite, which seems to be common place among drives from all vendors.I don't know. I still find it hard to justify a "premium" SSD above 512GB, when you'd want the peace of mind, oh well. Feel my pain?
BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
It is especially frustrating to pay more per GB when you see models with the same controller, memory, PCB, and type of NAND chips, but one model has a few more of the NAND chips to get the capacity. Their cost to build (per GB) would come down seeing as they don't need to spend any more on any components except the extra NAND chip. In situations where a different (and low quantity) controller and/or different NAND chips are used, there is some justification, but the premium presented to customers is sometimes disparate to the costs incurred by the manufacturer.Lolimaster - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Since when a simple MLC 4TB is not a mainstream product? That should be the aim for sata SSD's.Now they try to seel you MLC like it was SLC. For less than $1k we get the 2xCrucial MX500 2TB, yeah TLC, but why MLC needs to be that costly...
BurntMyBacon - Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - link
Now that all the other manufacturers have stepped away from MLC, there is both no direct competition and an artificial shortage (or the appearance there of) for people who want MLC. I imagine the MRSP will not stick around for very long if they want to sell these. Unfortunately, I also imagine that they will settle in to the (still high) price bracket that their 850 series counterparts are at now.comma - Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - link
Could you clarify what capacities are correlated with what size PCB?Are the 256gb and 512gb pcbs the smaller pcb? The anandtech 850 evo review has a section on "inside the drives" where it compares the pcb sizes to the capacity. If you could add something like that for this review, that would be awesome. Many thanks!