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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beginner99 - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Sounds great until you see the price. Even for an enthusiast a crucial MX100 is probably the more reasonable choice. It's half the price...juhatus - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Yeah, the most important factor of a SATA SSD is the price, not how it will saturate the 550Mb limit in a scenario that will never happen for most consumers. Now even a mention on the first page, eh? Please put a little pressure for the manufacturers to move on to M.2 and NVME.**In the Midnight hour, She cried more, more, more!!**
boogerlad - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Are you guys going to review the SM1715? Really curious to see how it stacks up against the Intel, especially in client workloads.pesho00 - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I realy hoped to see 2,3,4 TB drives with this technology :(But we will weith ;)
Nice drive, not so nice price ;)
MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Not much point in offering them now if you consider the price of the 1 TB version.Samus - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Those Koreans...they're just killer engineers.trumanhw - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I don't get it. I get about 505 read and 495 write on Evo. This goes up by TEN percent in performance and then all but DOUBLES the price?I'm confident someone here has understanding of this I'm missing--please reply and just point me to the parts that change my view.
Thanks
hojnikb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Your EVO has worse endurance, lower IOPS, lower consistency and most of all lower Write speeds (495MB/s write is due to trick called turbowrite).Sequential speeds are only a part of the story.
emn13 - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I always wonder who this kind of drive is supposed to be aimed at. Yes, it's fast; but the competition is fast enough that I really can't imagine anyone *noticing* the difference outside of artificial extremely heavy non-stop I/O. And I don't mean light-load non-stop, I mean I/O's maxed out non-stop so the drives can't take time to garbage collect.So... a power user is unlikely to notice much difference outside of short bursts of high-I/O apps, and as the rather heavy 2011 light load demonstrates, the drives are already maxing out there too. I just can't think of a real-world load where a human being would notice the performance difference and care about it; that would imply a performance difference of around a factor 2.
So we're left with a super fast drive (good for bragging rights, but what else?), but some apparently intentionally missing features like power-loss protection. Why would even a heavy user choose this over, say, samsungs own 840 EVO, or crucial's MX100/M500?
I just don't see the value here. To me this looks like microoptimization and losing sight of the bigger picture.
Price matters. Features matter. Performance - only until you're fast enough.
hojnikb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Kinga agree with this. If you REALLY need every bit of performance, you won't be looking for SATA drives at all.This probobly has a nieche.
But mainstream drives are really fast enough these days for most people.