SSD of the Week – Samsung 850 EVO

In our previous SSD of the Week we looked at the Samsung portable SSD T1, a small and secure SSD for when you are on the go. This week we look at another one of Samsung’s products, the Samsung 850 EVO. We reviewed this SSD back in December and now it has had a very competitive drop in price to challenge some of the recently released SSDs. Also, it even beats the price points of many lower tiered SSDs, while providing better performance.

Samsung 850 EVO-6

The Samsung 850 EVO comes in the 120GB ($77.99), 250GB ($114.99), 500GB ($179.99), and 1TB (399.99) capacities. The 500GB capacity especially is a super value buy now for its price point.  The 850 EVO uses a dual-core MGX controller for the 120GB, 250GB, and 500GB capacities and a 3-core MEX controller for their 1TB. Using Samsung’s 32-layer TLC 3D V-NAND, the 850 EVO can reach sequential speeds of up to 540MB/s read and 520MB/s write across all capacities. Read IOPS for 4KB, QD1 performance is rated at 10,000 and write is rated for 40,000 IOPS.  4K queue depth 32 performance is rated for up to 98,000 IOPS read and 90,000 IOPS write. To achieve such numbers The 850 EVO uses Samsung’s TurboWrite technology which takes a small portion of the TLC 3D V-NAND and simulate it as SLC NAND to achieve faster performance.

Samsung 850 EVO-8

The 850 EVO has quite a lot of features including AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption which is Windows eDrive compatible. To view the full list as well as see the changes of RAPID Mode from the 850 Pro to the 850 EVO look at the Samsung 850 EVO 120GB/500GB and 1TB reviews, where they won our Gold Seal and Editor’s Choice awards.

TSSDR Gold Seal and Editors Choice

The Samsung 850 EVO is a great quality mainstream SSD that was released a few months ago and now it even has competitive prices with entry-level SSDs, what more can you ask for? If you need an SSD now is the time.

Check out the Samsung 850 EVO on Amazon Today!

14 comments

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    ‘Referral Tag= of the Week’

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    After the last EVO disaster… never again to buy Scamsung.

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      What do you refer to?

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      oh come on, you are overdoing it the usual american way. Never again Samsung. Never again HP because one notebook broke down on me 7 years ago. Never again Dell because their monitor went bust. What you will buy in three years when everything will be “never again” in your book ?

      Man up ! If you have your SSDs working in temperature controlled environment (=not overheating), you will never get this slow-down problem. I say it’s just improper usage that causes pain.

      And of course, TLC never was and never will be premium class. I never had Samsung SSD, so this is not to defend them. I don’t care. This is to enlighten your fast-as-America-only-can-make NeverAgain ™ conclusions. Maybe absolutely the same thing would happen to 50% of all manufacturers and all their TLC SSDs if subjected to improper thermal handling (heat ’em up and test).

      Think about it. Really. That 840EVO has issues doesn’t mean other things are not top class. You’d be surprised how many datacenters are running Sammies. How many important data are stored not only on enterprise-class Sammies, but also on consumer-class 840Pros and 850Pros.

      Will they say never again as quickly as you did ? I doubt so.

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        >Man up ! If you have your SSDs working in temperature controlled
        environment (=not overheating), you will never get this slow-down
        problem. I say it’s just improper usage that causes pain.

        Thats not true at all. You will get slowdowns regardless of temparature.

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        You are right, I’ve overdone it a litlle. My apologies. Well some things get me started quite easily.

        https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/Samsung-840-840-EVO-susceptible-flash-read-speed-degradation-over-time

        temperature still plays a role, page 3. Big role. Maybe the TLC problem was corrected or didn’t exist at all, I don’t know – I’m not NAND engineer/SSD architect – maybe it’s all just about thermal throttling of controller. Well it easily might seem that way after the first firmware update, given the “temperature/performance” graph on last page.

        See, if we like it or not, such semi-fatal or fatal issues are, unfortunately, part of our IT life. And will be more and more as all gets more and more complicated. There are PLENTY of other SSDs and firmware updates, preventing possible data loss/data corruption, general failures (https://www.kingston.com/us/support/technical/downloads?product=SV100S2&filename=SV100S2_64_128_120504), boot problems, performance issues and improvements (not arising from TLC/overheating problem), BSODs and other FATAL issues.

        There are such updates available for RAID controllers. Adaptec, LSI, HP, DELL, it goes on and on and on ENDLESSLY. Servers. BIOSes not entirely compatible with some CPUs, causing blue screens or other kind of unexpected crashes, kernel panics, ESX purple screens… fatal issues all around me. I deal with that every single day on every front.

        See… as I say, never again HP, never again Dell, never again IBM, let’s ride horses because even our CARS have significant and fatal callbacks and firmware [!!!!!] updates. You never got new software programmed into your car ? Injectors and turbochargers replaced under warranties due to manufacturing faults (what happens if you overtake and it goes bust ? Will incoming truck run over you because you don’t manage to finish overtaking due to lost power ?). Fuel pumps potentially causing fire. Never again Mercedes. Never again Audi. Never again BMW. Never again Toyota with that pedal issue (pedal manufactured in America, if I remember correctly ; plus that was a non-existing issue downright from start, just press da fokin’ brake and car WILL stop, no matter what those run-away driver morons say, they just wanted to sue Toyota and get heaps of money, nothing more nothing less).

        Right ?

        Disclairmer : I never had Samsung SSD. Not a single one.

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        jeeeeeeeez even horses have their own issues : you just can’t run it full throttle, then suddenly stop and shut down.

        Even a horse requires “proper handling” 🙂

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        If its designed propery, thermal issues are the last thing to be worried about.

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        The reason controller throttles and drops the speeds is becuase it has to do much much more ECC work than usual (because of the errors in TLC nand). That means more heat and thus throttling which in turn further decreases speed.

        But heat on its own is NOT the main cause of the slowdowns. Its the small litography nand combined with tlc that makes this soo apperent.
        So yeah, this is MOST DEFENETLY a nand issue.

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    Very pleased with my 850 evo, really really fast. I upgraded from a 60GB Kingston V300 (before the NAND nerf) to a 250GB and the evo outperforms it in just about anything. High iops (dont really care much about that), higher reads (525 vs 387) but write speed is slightly lower and boot times are slightly longer – Which is weird since the drive performs better in anything else. Silly windows 🙂

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