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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MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
No, it's really "600 MB/s whatever". In reality about 550 MB/s seems to be the maximum. With 300r + 300w full duplex neither read nor write could surpass 300 MB/s.zmeul - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
why I ask thisI see a lot op people putting SSDs in RAID0, and I wonder why ... to me, it seems totally pointless
the system doesn't do only writes or only reads, so what's the point? well, except in the cases where you copy/move some huge files from one matrix to another
Cerb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Copying large files, and loading large files. Realistically, you can copy from a new SSD to another at anywhere from 250MBps to 450MBps (including OS/filesystem overhead). That's halved, or worse, copying from an SSD to itself. RAID 0 gives you an approximately linear bandwidth increase. If you don't need a logical or physical separation of data locations, RAID 0 beats a separate drive.When I'm backing up my Bethesda games directory, I wish I had more speed, as it could be done faster in a RAID. However, I only do that one or two times per month (all my saves for all my games are on automatic backup).
For typical light random IO, it very much is pointless.
457R4LDR34DKN07 - Wednesday, July 2, 2014 - link
Easy, say you have 2 sata 2.0 SSD but want sata 3.0 speeds.Kevin G - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Typo?"I bet many of you would have liked to see the 850 Pro move to the PCIe interface but I understand Samsung's decision to hold on with PCIe for a little while longer."
I think the second PCIe should be SATA.
stickmansam - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
of the "on" could be a "off'Solid State Brain - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
How many P/E cycles does the NAND on this drive support, by SMART data?Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I will test that as soon as I get back from Korea, as well as send you the Extreme Pro data. Sorry for not replying to your email earlier, I kind of lost focus on everything else when I started working on this review :)Solid State Brain - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
No problem, thanks!extide - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
You should actually put up a little pipeline article with all of this data, because it would be interesting to me, and I am sure lots of other users as well.