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REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
The future looks promising as barriers are starting to be overcome in flash memory manufacturing. While other NAND manufacturers such as Toshiba, SanDisk, Intel, and Micron are still continuing with smaller nanometer 2D NAND design, Samsung is definitely paving a way for innovation and future progress in flash storage by finally introducing their 3D V-NAND to the consumer marketplace.
From reaching the highest score we have seen in PCMark Vantage and improved RAPID support, to its low power usage during idle and DEVSLP, the Samsung 850 Pro is definitely a top performing drive with a lot of decent features included. One of the only things missing in the drive is power loss protection. If an entry level Crucial MX100 can have power loss protection built into it, we find no reason to not integrate it into a top tier consumer SSD like the Samsung 850 Pro.
For me, as a photographer who uses Photoshop extensively at times, seeing the low steady state performance for the Photoshop heavy test is a bit of a turn off. However, while low in the degraded and steady state, when it is running in a TRIM enabled environment and able to use garbage collection, the Samsung 850 Pro is still one of the fastest SATA drives on the market right now.
FINAL THOUGHTS
As mentioned earlier, we are really liking this trend of the 10 year warranty for high end enthusiast class drives such as the SanDisk and Samsung. Not only does it provide ease of mind that, if you need to RMA 10 years down the road you’re covered, it also proves to consumers that these drives are top dog and backed by the company with full confidence to perform.
The distinct difference between the Samsung 850 Pro and the SanDisk Extreme pro is that the 850 Pro includes full hardware encryption support. This could end up providing a large advantage to the Samsung with more people now buying mobile laptops over desktop systems. But then again, how many actually use encryption? I know I never have, nor have I met many who do.
The Samsung 850 Pro does come in at a small premium over its main competitor, thus price could be another factor. So we will see what happens over the next few months as sales grow.
Watch For Samsung 850 SSD Pricing at Amazon!
Check Out Our 850 Pro 1TB Review Here!
Review Overview
Build
Performance
Consistency
Features
SSD Warranty
The Frist Consumer VNAND SSD!
The Samsung 850 Pro is the highest performing SATA 6Gb/s SSD we have reviewed to date. Packed with new innovative 3D V-NAND, full encryption support, and backed by an industry leading 10 year warranty, it is definitely worth a look!
Do you feel like this is a game changer as far as SSD’s go? or just a good alternative to buying the Samsung 840 pro(which I own) ?
Well, performance has only slightly been improved, not enough to really be perceivable compared to your own 840 Pro. We don’t have any consistency tests of the old pro so we can’t direct compare for you yet. But the 10 year warranty, endurance increase, and the new V-NAND are definitely game changers.
Yeah I had a feeling that was going to be the case with the SSD, so if you do not already have an SSD and looking for a top of the line product in the consumer product then the 850 pro is a very good way to go. I remember with the EVO cam out with the RAPID technology and how pumped some enthusiasts were about the idea. I also remember that you mentioned it would eventually be able to be used by a 840 pro model, and one day while updating my firmware, it said Rapid available for these models and I was pretty excited. Especially because their is not just benchmark differences but also real world difference. Do you know if this SSD will have access to something similar? or maybe another a in the 850 line will. Thanks for the reply and keep writing man, I’ll keep reading.