Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB Review

Conclusion

The SSD 850 PRO is yet another fantastic entry into the SSD market from Samsung. With the limits of the SATA interface quickly being reached now, it's harder to tease out the performance differences between drives. Even so, the SSD 850 PRO is class-leading in virtually every single benchmark, and the target audience of this drive will be particularly pleased with its improvements in write consistency, which is the main area where it could be said the SSD 840 PRO was lacking.


It's not just performance that's improved either, as endurance and power consumption have also improved. The ten year warranty is awesome, as is the 150TB TBW limit that accompanies it, especially for the 128GB version. It's much higher than what any other consumer SSD currently has, though it should be noted that the NAND will likely outlive 150TB TBW many times over (the limit is to stop enterprise customers buying the drives and abusing the warranty). In fact, for most people sticking to expected prosumer/client workloads, the SSD 850 PRO will probably outlive them. The Magician software also continues to be a highlight, not just because of RAPID Mode (though that helps), but also just in terms of how easy and clear it is to use and the other features it has.

As such, the final factor to consider is price. If our current guesstimate of about £145 is correct, the SSD 850 PRO 256GB is only about £10 more than the same capacity SSD 840 PRO. It's definitely expensive compared to some SSDs on the market (e.g. the Crucial MX100 and Samsung's own SSD 840 EVO), but in reality, it's difficult to argue with what the SSD 850 PRO offers, and it isn't as much of a premium as it could've been. It's basically the best 2.5-inch SATA SSD available, and if it's really what your workload demands, the price is unlikely to be much of a sticking point. Samsung has delivered once again here; we can't wait to see what the company has in store for the client space when it comes to PCI-E based drives and newer form factors.