When we reviewed the high-end Samsung SSD 850 Pro drive earlier this year, we were very impressed by its speed (it's still the fastest overall of any SATA-based drive we've tested) and its 10-year warranty, double that of most other enthusiast- and consumer-focused solid-state drives (SSDs). Given the performance bottleneck that the SATA 3.0 interface has become, however, it really wasn't that much faster than other, much more affordable drives, such as the excellent Crucial MX100 or the older Samsung SSD 840 EVO. That made the SSD 850 Pro hard to recommend to mainstream users—it was more of a specialty drive for power users seeking every last bit and byte of speed-per-second from their SSDs.
At the time, though, we predicted that Samsung would likely deliver a cheaper model, an SSD 850 EVO drive, before too long. And we theorized that this eventual drive might combine the cost-effective Triple Layer Cell (TLC) NAND memory-chip technology (present in the SSD 840 EVO) with the speed and endurance benefits of the newer kind of memory, 3D V-NAND, that debuted in the SSD 850 Pro.
If you're reading this, it's obvious that that time has come.
Similar Products
Samsung SSD 850 Pro (1TB)
AMD Radeon R7 Series SSD (240GB)
Crucial MX100
Corsair Force LX (256GB)
Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series (240GB)
OCZ Vertex 460 (240GB)
The SSD 850 EVO ($269) is indeed here, debuting on Dec. 8, 2014, and expected to start selling to consumers later in December. And it's a good one. It comes in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB versions. The drive's performance is very impressive, and its five-year warranty bests that of other mainstream drives. (Most of those come with three years of coverage.) Pricing may be its biggest hurdle to SSD stardom—at least at first.
We reviewed the SSD 850 EVO in early December 2014, and at launch, the price was $269 for the 500GB model we tested. That makes the SSD 850 EVO much more affordable than the SSD 850 Pro (which, when the SSD 850 EVO launched, was selling for about $340 at the same capacity). But that's expensive compared with some other mainstream drives. (Crucial's 512GB version of the MX100, for example, was available online for about $200.)
Still, those comparisons are based on the launch price, or MSRP, for the SSD 850 EVO. The street prices of SSDs often wind up being much lower than the MSRP—especially once a couple of months have passed. So while the initial pricing on the SSD 850 EVO might seem a touch high versus some of its competition, we'll have to wait and see just how much of a "bargain" this new drive ends up being once it's been out for a bit.
Samsung does have a history of quickly adjusting the street prices of its drives. For instance, the SSD 850 Pro, which, when we wrote this, had been on the market about four months, was selling for about $70 below MSRP at both the 512GB and 1TB capacities. And the SSD 840 EVO that the 850 EVO is replacing has generally kept pace with other budget-to-mainstream-priced SSDs over the last year or so, making it (depending on the sales available on any given day) one of the most affordable big-name drives you could buy.
For the record, at launch, the pricing for the SSD 850 EVO's other capacities—120GB ($99), 250GB ($149), and 1TB ($499)—places the drive closer to the enthusiast realm than the mainstream-drive market. The street prices of both the enthusiast-aimed Crucial M550 and Intel SSD 730 Series drives are generally lower at similar capacities. To be fair, though, as we'll see later in testing, the SSD 850 EVO bests even most enthusiast-class drives in overall performance. In a few tests, it even beat the company's own SSD 850 Pro.
When we wrote this, those looking for very good SSD performance—and the lowest possible price—in a drive at 250GB or up might have been better off opting for a Crucial MX100 drive or the older Samsung SSD 840 EVO (while supplies of that latter SSD last). But assuming street prices drop a fair bit below MSRP, as they consistently have in the past, the SSD 850 EVO will likely wind up being the best balance of speed, affordability, and drive longevity as 2015 progresses.
Just note that the 1TB-capacity version of the SSD 850 EVO may deliver slightly different performance. The 500GB model we tested, as well as the lesser capacities, use a dual-core MGX controller, while the 1TB version uses the same MEX controller that's in the SSD 850 Pro. Samsung claims that performance with either controller should be similar, but that the MEX controller has an extra core, which isn't very helpful with smaller drive capacities, but consumes extra power. (We didn't have an opportunity to test the 1TB version, just the 500GB.)
Design and Features
The SSD 850 EVO combines two storage technologies from previous Samsung drives: The aforementioned TLC from the SSD 840 EVO, which helps make storing more data less expensive, and 3D cell stacking (which Samsung calls "V-NAND"). That carries over from the higher-end SSD 850 Pro.
Technically, TLC isn't rated for the same read/write endurance as drives that use more traditional Multi-Layer Cell (MLC) memory, all else being equal. But the extra endurance afforded by the 3D stacking makes up for that—and then some. While all versions of the SSD 850 EVO have a five-year warranty, the 500GB and 1TB models are rated to handle 150TB of total writes, or over 80GB a day. (The lesser capacities are rated to handle "only" 75GB of writes.)
If you're writing more than 40GB of data to your drive every day, seven days a week, you're more than likely running some type of server, and you shouldn't opt for a consumer-focused drive, anyway. Most average consumers will likely get well more than five years of reliable performance out of the SSD 850 EVO drive. If you want your drive to last longer, you might look at the SSD 850 Pro, which has a whopping 10-year warranty. While the warranty length is no guarantee of a given drive's longevity—nor should you look at it as an "expiration date" on the drive—it's a signal of Samsung's relative expectations about the EVO line versus the Pro.
On the subject of longevity, we would be remiss not to mention the speed slowdowns experienced by some users of the last-generation SSD 840 EVO drive, as covered extensively by the hardware site PC Perspective. Since the SSD 850 Pro also uses TLC memory, users may be wary of the SSD 850 EVO. In response to the problem, Samsung issued a software fix for the SSD 840 EVO drives, which seems to have solved the issue.
It seems unlikely that newer drives will suffer from a similar glitch—most especially, because the memory type in the SSD 850 EVO is fundamentally different than that of the 840 EVO. That's thanks to the addition of V-NAND, which presents a completely different storage paradigm. Instead of stacking all the memory cells side-by-side, as solid-state storage drives have traditionally done in the past, V-NAND also stacks storage cells vertically (hence the "V"). This allows the company to pack more storage onto the drive without needing to ever-miniaturize the cells to pack more in, while keeping speed and endurance high. It is, literally, an issue of physical-space availability.
The Samsung SSD 850 EVO is housed in a black metal shell, front and back...
Much like most recent drives we've seen, it is 7mm thick for wider compatibility with thin laptops and ultrabooks. In the basic drive kit we received, Samsung did not bundle a "spacer" frame, which some SSD vendors do, to fill the extra space in larger notebooks that have 9.5mm-high drive bays. You'll have to improvise your own if you own such a laptop. (See our guide to 20 Terms You Need to Know When Buying an SSD.)
Unlike many SSD families, which tend to exhibit lesser performance the further you drop down the capacity ladder, up and down the line the SSD 850 EVO has the same rated 540MB-per-second sequential-read speed and 520MB-per-second sequential-write speed, whether you opt for the 120GB base model, the 1TB version, or either of the two capacities in between (250GB or 500GB). The pricier SSD 850 Pro is rated slightly higher at 550MB per second for reads, but at the same 520MB per second for writes, at most capacities. This is important for those considering the smaller-capacity versions of either the Crucial MX100 or the SSD 840 EVO. Those drives have significantly lower rated speeds—particularly write speeds. As a result, if you're looking specifically for a drive in the 120GB range, and write speed is important to you, you'll want to steer clear of those drives in favor of the SSD 850 EVO.
Our retail-boxed review drive of the SSD 850 EVO shipped with just the drive, a software install disc, and a paper warranty pamphlet and quick start guide...
Samsung often also sells its SSDs for a slight premium as laptop or desktop upgrade kits, which might contain a 3.5-inch-bay drive bracket and/or a SATA-to-USB adapter for drive cloning. So be on the lookout for those if you need accessories with your drive.
Software
It's also worth pointing out that Samsung's Magician 4 and Data Migration Software—for tweaking, migrating, and optimizing your drive—comes bundled with the drive on the installer disc. It remains by far the most attractive and intuitive SSD suite we've used. Now, mind you, you don't have to install it, and Intel offers some nice (though not quite as polished) SSD software, too. But Samsung's SSD software is well worth taking the time to install and try—even if you don't think you need it.
One reason why: A central feature baked into Samsung's Magician suite is RAPID Mode, which caches data in unused parts of your system's RAM...
RAPID Mode can make use of 1GB to 4GB of system RAM, depending on how much you have. Performance junkies and tweakers may get a kick out of RAPID Mode, and in the SSD 850 EVO, the software can scale the amount of RAM it uses up and down dynamically. It certainly looks impressive in benchmark testing, though the numbers it kicks back are much bigger proportionally than the actual real-world improvement you'll feel in using it day-to-day. (For example, it improved the SSD 850 EVO's score on the PCMark 7 Secondary Storage Test, which we'll discuss on the next page, by only about 8 percent.) Though it's worth playing with, we don't consider RAPID Mode a deal-making selling point or something we'd switch on and use all the time.
That's because modern operating systems already cache files in memory on their own. And storing significant numbers of in-progress files in RAM can be risky if your system happens to suddenly lose power. (Those running desktops with UPS-style battery backups might feel more secure enabling it.) Samsung states in one of its white papers for the drive that "RAPID Mode was designed to not add any additional risk to the user or system data, even in the event of power loss." But if you're at all worried about file loss, we'd still recommend keeping it disabled, at least when you're working on documents or other productivity tasks. The drive is impressively fast enough on its own that most users won't see a pronounced real-world advantage from using RAPID Mode, in most cases. And in the areas where it could make the most difference (reading and writing huge multi-gigabyte files), the system isn't likely to have enough free RAM available to cache those files unless you have 16GB or more of memory.
In our Performance section, coming up, we didn't chart the drive using RAPID Mode, because on most benchmark tests, the results wind up showing essentially the speed of the RAM, rather than the speed of the SSD itself. It's a nice feature worth trying out if you buy this or another recent Samsung drive, but we wouldn't call it a make-or-break one.
The rest of the Magician suite, though, is indeed a value-add. The top-level menu of the Magician utility is as good an SSD control center as we have seen...
From here, you can access the RAPID Mode control panel, as well as submenus for drive data security and tweaking the default overprovisioning on the drive, among a smattering of data-erase and drive-benchmarking tools.
The overprovisioning menu is especially interesting. Here, you can change the amount of drive space set aside for replacing worn cells, and other maintenance tasks. (The default setting is 10 percent.)
<
Likewise, the depth of the drive-security options exceeds what you get with most other mainstream drives, and it's easy to activate here...
Of note, support for the hardware-based OPAL security protocol from the Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is present, for encrypting the drive. That support is not a given on the SSD front, though we have seen it on some recent drives, such as the Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series.
Performance Testing
If you're new to the world of solid-state drives, a few things are worth noting when it comes to performance.
For starters: If you're upgrading from a standard spinning hard drive, any modern SSD will be a huge improvement, speeding up boot times and making programs launch faster. But today's high-end SSDs make use of a specific interface, SATA 3.0 (also called "6Gbps SATA"), to achieve maximum speed versus older, but still common, SATA 2 ports, which top out at 300MB per second. We test all our SSDs on a SATA 3.0-equipped testbed PC to show their full performance abilities. To get the most speed possible from modern drives, you'll need a system with SATA 3.0 capability, as well.
If your system is based on a recent Intel Haswell, Ivy Bridge, or Sandy Bridge chipset (or one of the newer AMD chipsets), there's a very good chance that your laptop or desktop has the newer, faster interface. Be sure before buying, though. If your system doesn't have a SATA 3.0 interface, there's little point in paying a premium for a drive with the maximum possible performance. SATA 3.0-capable drives will work just fine with previous-generation SATA ports, but there's scant reason to pay extra for drive speed that your system can't take advantage of. A basic drive will work just as well, in that SATA 3.0-less scenario.
One note before we jump into testing: In the interest of getting the best possible performance out of our test drives, we've shifted to testing with Intel's Rapid Storage Technology (RST) driver installed, rather than the standard Microsoft AHCI driver we've used in the past. In the charts below, all drives were tested or retested with Intel's RST drivers installed. (In testing a host of drives with both drivers for comparison purposes, though, we've seldom seen a difference of more than 5 percent on any given test.)
10GB File Copy Test
Our 10GB File Copy Test employs a Computer Shopper-specific test folder that we use with every SSD we test. The 10GB worth of files are in a variety of sizes and types (including, but not exclusively, JPGs, Word documents, and video files).
In this real-world test, we first copy the test folder onto the SSD, which has been secure-erased and reformatted before the process begins. We then make a folder-to-folder copy of the file on the SSD itself, and time the process. We use the software TeraCopy to manage the file transfer and time the process precisely.
The SSD 850 EVO landed a second behind its predecessor on this first test, but its score was still just a couple seconds behind the fastest drive we've tested here. In contrast, Crucial's 512GB MX100 trailed 18 seconds behind the new EVO.
PCMark 7 Secondary Storage Test
The Secondary Storage Test is a subtest under Futuremark's larger PCMark 7 benchmarking suite. It employs a different approach to drive testing than pure speed tests like AS-SSD, which we'll get to in a moment. PCMark 7 runs a series of scripted tasks typical of everyday PC operation and disk accesses. It measures app launches, video-conversion tasks, image import, operations in Windows Media Center, and more. The result is a proprietary numeric score; the higher the number, the better.
This score is useful in gauging everyday, general performance versus other drives. Note that, like with our 10GB File Copy Test, we secure-erase all SSDs using the utility Parted Magic before running PCMark 7's Secondary Storage Test.
The SSD 850 EVO impressed on this test, landing right behind the SSD 850 Pro. The latter was only outscored here by the Plextor M6e M.2 drive, which isn't hindered by the limitations of the SATA 3.0 interface.
AS-SSD Sequential Read & Write Speeds
The AS-SSD benchmark utility is designed specifically to test solid-state drives (as opposed to traditional hard drives). It reports a variety of scores, but the ones we are reporting in these two charts following measure a drive's ability to read and write large files. Drive makers often quote these speeds, as a theoretical maximum, on the packaging or in advertising. Sequential speeds are important if you're working with very large files for image or video editing, or you play lots of games with large levels that take a long time to load with traditional hard drives. Again, we secure-erase all SSDs using the utility Parted Magic before running this test.
In this test of large-file reads, charted above, the SSD 850 EVO looked less impressive than on most of our tests, though it was still no slouch. It essentially tied the last-generation SSD 840 EVO, while trailing Crucial's less-expensive MX100 drives by 5MB to 8MB per second. If you're constantly working with large files in a professional production environment, you might want to consider paying more for the SSD 850 Pro, which did measurably better here.
Switching over to large-file writes, the SSD 850 EVO looked a lot better, landing near the top of our test pack. It minimally trailed last year's SSD 840 EVO, but it outpaced Crucial's MX100 drive.
Not all benchmark tests bring the same results, however, even when they're meant to test the same thing. That was evidenced by another sequential read/write trial we ran, using the Physical Disks subtest in the SiSoft Sandra system testing suite.
SiSoft Sandra Sequential Read & Write Tests
The Physical Disks test in SiSoft Sandra measures, among other things, sequential-read and -write performance, like AS-SSD does in part. Here, the SSD 850 EVO scored close to its Samsung-rated sequential read speed of 540MB per second, tying the pricier SSD 850 Pro and edging slightly ahead of the MX100 drives.
Switching then to large-file writes, the SSD 850 EVO scored the same on the SiSoft Sandra test as it did on the AS-SSD test.
That's still a solid 6MB per second ahead of the 512GB model of Crucial's MX100 drive.
AS-SSD 4K Read & Write Speeds
This test, also a part of the SSD-centric AS-SSD benchmark, measures a drive's ability to traffic small files. Often overlooked, 4K performance, particularly 4K write performance, is quite important when it comes to boot speed and program launch times.
When an SSD is booting up and launching programs, many tiny files get accessed and edited frequently. The faster your drive can write and read these kinds of files (especially dynamic link library, or DLL, files in Windows), the faster your OS will "feel." Since these small files are accessed much more frequently than large media or game-level files, a drive's performance on this test will have a greater impact on how fast a drive feels in everyday use.
When reading small files, the SSD 850 EVO excelled, landing at the top of the charts. It was also more than 10MB per sceond faster on this test than Crucial's MX100 drives (at both capacities we tested), and even 8MB per second ahead of the pricier SSD 850 Pro...
On the more-important small-file write test, the SSD 850 EVO was only bested by Plextor's M6e M.2 drive, which isn't limited by the SATA interface. The 256GB model of the Crucial MX100 managed to tie the SSD 850 EVO on this test, which is impressive. The higher-capacity 512GB MX100 model, though, was less impressive, falling more than 12MB per second behind the new EVO drive...
On the whole, the SSD 850 EVO is a very impressive performer with small files. Even most enthusiast-class SATA drives couldn't beat it in our testing.
Conclusion
In most performance aspects, the SSD 850 EVO came close to or even bested the SSD 850 Pro—which is still the fastest SATA drive we've tested to date. The SSD 850 Pro only decisively trumped this latest EVO drive on warranty—and even there, the SSD 850 EVO's five-year warranty beats that of most other mainstream drives by a couple of years.
You would think that all of that, taken together, would make the SSD 850 EVO an easy recommend for most upgraders—and, if you're looking specifically for a high-performance drive in the 120GB capacity range, this is definitely the one we'd tout of the current lot.
The problem is, we have only seen suggested pricing for the SSD 850 EVO at this point, so it's hard to judge it from a best-value perspective yet. (Samsung intends to ship it worldwide later in December, so pricing will really only shake out on this drive in early 2015.) At the SSD 850 EVO's debut, Crucial's MX100 cost significantly less than the EVO drives' list prices, while still delivering very good performance, at least in the 512GB and 256GB MX100 capacities we tested. So you'll want to be sure to check pricing carefully before buying. While the SSD 850 EVO is a measurably faster drive in most general-use scenarios, you aren't likely to notice performance differences between these two without breaking out some benchmark utilities.
If you can save $70 or so by opting for the Crucial drive (as you can as of this writing), that drive is still worth considering—especially if you aren't a media professional or otherwise working on tasks where the maximum possible drive speed is paramount to you. The SSD 850 EVO's longer warranty is appreciated, and worth the price difference if you're thinking of getting the 1TB capacity. But three years down the road, if either drive were to fail, replacing a 250GB or 500GB drive with another of the same capacity won't be a major expense, considering how SSD prices continue to slide.
Still, we have a strong hunch that the SSD 850 EVO's price will be more competitive once it hits online and in-store retailers, and early adopters have snatched up the initial stock. We don't see that happening before January 2015, but if it does, and the SSD 850 EVO winds up even $20 or $30 above the best-value drives of the moment (the Crucial MX100 and Samsung's own SSD 840 EVO), it will be the best drive for most mainstream buyers. It is, after all, one of the fastest SATA-based drives you can buy, second at this point only to Samsung's own SSD 850 Pro. And the software rocks.
For desktop-PC users who have purchased an SSD in the last year or two, though, and are generally happy with current performance, this is no knee-jerk upgrade. We'd suggest waiting a bit until we see more M.2 and SATA Express drives, which break past SATA 3.0's bandwidth bottleneck. As impressive as the SSD 850 EVO and the SSD 850 Pro are, they aren't that much faster than most other recent, well-received SATA drives.
Of course, if you want to use an M.2 or SATA Express drive, you'll either need to buy a new X79 or X99 motherboard, or opt for a drive like Plextor's M6e M.2 PCIe, which works with desktops and comes as a drive mounted on a PCI Express card, which plugs into a spare PCI Express slot. Samsung, too, intends to release M.2 versions of the SSD 850 EVO in 2015, so if your system is equipped for M.2 today, or you mean to upgrade the mainboard, you might want to wait until one of those solutions comes available.
In the meantime, though, the Samsung SSD 850 EVO is as good as it comes in consumer-grade SATA storage upgrades.
Like What You're Reading?
Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox.
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Sign up for other newsletters
