Samsung SSD 850 Pro (128GB, 256GB & 1TB) Review: Enter the 3D Era
by Kristian Vättö on July 1, 2014 10:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Samsung does not cease to amaze me with their SSDs as the 850 Pro just kills it in every aspect. The performance is there. The endurance is the best of the class. Heck, even Samsung's feature and software suites beat the competition by a mile. To be honest, there is not a single thing missing in the 850 Pro because regardless of the angle you look at the drive from, it it will still top the charts.
Samsung's heavy investment on NAND R&D and specifically 3D NAND is really paying off in the 850 Pro. Thanks to the more efficient structure of 3D NAND, Samsung has been able to improve all three main aspects of NAND i.e. performance, endurance and power consumption. It will be very hard for anyone to compete with the 850 Pro as the characteristics of V-NAND are superior compared to 2D NAND. The density is also very competitive against the smallest 2D NAND nodes, meaning that V-NAND should not carry a hefty premium over MLC.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (6/28/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | 960GB/1TB | |
| Samsung SSD 850 Pro (MSRP) | $130 | $200 | $400 | $700 |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $120 | $190 | $401 | - |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $80 | $140 | $240 | $420 |
| SanDisk Extreme Pro | - | $200 | $370 | $600 |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $80 | $150 | $260 | - |
| Crucial MX100 | $75 | $110 | $210 | - |
| Crucial M550 | $104 | $157 | $280 | $491 |
| Plextor M6S | $100 | $145 | $400 | - |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $270 | $500 | - |
| Intel SSD 530 | $94 | $165 | $330 | - |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $115 | $190 | $370 | - |
Update: Samsung just provided us the updated MSRPs, which I have added to the table. The old MSRPs were $230 for 256GB, $430 for 512GB and $730 for the 1TB capacity. This certainly makes the 850 Pro more price competitive with the Extreme Pro, although the 1TB drive is still $100 more.
The MSRPs, on the other hand, are a bit of a letdown. I was hoping that Samsung would have priced the 850 Pro more aggressively because now they are asking anywhere between $30 and $130 more than what SanDisk is charging for the Extreme Pro. The 850 Pro is certainly a better drive in all areas but forking over up to $130 more for one can be difficult to justify. Of course, as with all MSRPs, they should be taken with a grain of salt and I certainly hope that the actual street prices end up being closer to the Extreme Pro ones the 850 Pro becomes available in the next few weeks.
If you are looking for a SATA 6Gbps drive and want the absolute best, the 850 Pro is your pick. It is without a doubt the best drive in the market as long as you are able to justify the price premium over other options.
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Cerb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
"cheese in in" -> "cheese in it"?Cerb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
The above was meant to not be a reply to yours. In general, there's isn't much, though, because with SATA, we're still stuck needing striped RAID to improve bandwidth. Assuming they can keep costs in check, the rapid shrinking,m and thus capacity increases over the next few years, will give us something much more useful. That said, it's nice that they caught up in terms of consistency.Donuts123 - Sunday, July 6, 2014 - link
More relevantly, the 150TB warranty figure applies to all capacities. All things being equal, a 128GB drive with 150TB written will have the same amount of flash wear as a 1TB drive with 1200TB written.So in practice the 1TB model will have far higher endurance than 150TB. But its warranty will expire when its flash is only 12.5% worn. Samsung aren't the only manufacturer to have low TBW warranty figures; Micron/Crucial does it as well, with the same TBW figure for all drive capacities.
8steve8 - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Yawn. Another SATA 2.5" SSD.How does this compare to m.2 PCIe drives like the XP941 and M6e?
Will we see m.2 PCIe NVMe drives before xmas?
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
The 850 Pro is now in the Bench so you can compare the two easily:http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1201?vs=125...
8steve8 - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
thanks, the XP941 demolishes this thing, why isn't it in the charts of this review? clearly PCIe m.2 would be on the radar for anyone looking for a high end SSD these days... ?it may not be readily available in the channels, but it is a taste of what is to come... personally I just got a 256GB plextor M6e PCIe m.2 for $220. It's easy to find in the market.
Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I didn't want to put the XP941 in the graphs because the availability and support are relatively limited and it would have broken some of the graphs.zmeul - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
just a quick dumb question:the bandwidth for SATA 3.0 - 6 Gbit/s is 600 MB/s right? so, it's 300MB/s read and 300MB/s write
correct ?
thesavvymage - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
no, its 600MB/s in total in either direction. you can max the 600 read if you arent doing any writes, etc. It isnt 300 max per direction, its 600 max for total data bandwidthzmeul - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
yes, I forgot to mention, duplex (at the same time) 300r+300w