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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TrackSmart - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I second this. The Anandtech SSD tests were designed so that we could tell the difference between drives that are all so fast - that there is no way to tell them apart in ordinary usage scenarios. I see the value of testing the theoretical performance of drives as manufacturers push the technological limits.That said, at the end of the day user-experience is what matters. I agree with emn13 that the "light workload" test is already more strenuous than anything the average user is likely to do, and looking at the chart, we see that almost every drive is within a range of ~280 to ~380 MB/s. I'm guessing that the range in performance gets even narrower for "real world" workloads.
So keep up the innovative SSD testing, but be sure to put these theoretical performance gains into a real-world context when you get to the Conclusions section of these articles. Not everyone will benefit from these theoretical increases in performance.
hojnikb - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Is Samsung planning on doing TLC based V-NAND anytime soon ?It would be great for a mainstream drive, since endurance would be higher (due to older node), speeds would probobly also went up (so no need for gimicks like turbowrite).
Or is it not mature enough to scale down to TLC ?
artifex - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
You had me at 10 years warranty. I don't mind the slight premium if I'm not buying another one midway through the cycle. Sure, it will be obsolete well before it dies, but that term signals Samsung is really confident about their reliability.Gigaplex - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Since it's twice the price of competition like the MX100, you're better off replacing mid way through the cycle.Arnulf - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I must have missed this in the article - are these V.NAND cells as used in 850 Pro drives 2 or 3 bits per cell ? I got the "larger lithography improves endurance" part, I'm just wondering whether they opted for more conservative option (MLC) there as well.extide - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
These are MLC, or 2 bit per cell.It would be interesting if the non pro 850 comes out with TLC V-NAND!
himem.sys - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Heh, we are waiting for tests 850pro vs 840pro, because there are no bigger differences "on paper".sirvival - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Hi,one question:
In the review the idle power consumption for e.g. the 850 128gig is 35 mw.
I wanted to compare that to my Samsung 470 so I went to Bench and selected the drives for comparison.
There it says that the 850 uses 0.29 Watt.
So how comes there is a difference?
KAlmquist - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
Anandtech Bench has four SSD power numbers:SSD Slumber Power (HIPM+DIPM)
Drive Power Consumption - Idle
Drive Power Consumption - Sequential Write
Drive Power Consumption - Random Write
The confusing things are that (1) the review only listed slumber power, not idle power, and (2) Bench lists both numbers but doesn't place the slumber power next to the other power values.
mutantmagnet - Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - link
I also find the lack of powerloss protection being a big negative over this hard drive. Until REFS has all the features it needs in Windows that you would get in Linux this is going to be an important feature for anyone who values data integrity. Even after that happens it still might be very important.