Samsung sprinkle their 850 EVO goodness in the direction of mobile users
Laptop users are generally caught between a rock and a hard place in respect to SSD technology. They want the speed and power efficiency, but they also don't want to give up the capacity of their hard drive. Thankfully, flash memory costs are now dropping, and thus drive sizes are growing to the point where SSD technology isn't necessarily the compromise it once was.
The new Samsung 850 EVO, in this mSATA form factor, is aimed specifically at this market of people with a mobile system that they'd like to provide with a significant performance boost. They are all built around Samsung’s new 3D V-NAND, and come in 120GB, 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities. The review model was the 500GB version, though - according to Samsung's information - all but the 120GB version delivers roughly the same performance. The smallest option has marginally lower Random Read IOPS (95k vs 97k), but most users wouldn't be able to detect the difference. There are architectural differences, that I'll mention later, but the TurboVVrite technology Samsung uses smooth's out those bumps very effectively. One other small variation is that the 1TB uses the MEX controller, where all the others use the new MGX chip.
The quoted speed is 540MB/S reads and 520MB/S writes, and testing with ATTO revealed those numbers to be pretty accurate. They're also very dose to the practical limits of SATA in this context, and could only be bettered with different technology.
With the performance box ticked, the next point of call is always reliability. Samsung have been bullish about V-NAND, and have extended the warranty period for 850 EVO to five years. This is where the drive capacity does have an impact, because the warranty specifies 75TB total bytes written (or 40GB per day) on the 120 and 250GB, and double that for the larger drives.
That means even the smaller drives better the reliability of the prior 840 EVO, and the larger ones are twice as good again. They also offer substantially greater power efficiency, reducing the amount of heat generated - a win-win for laptop users.
Incidentally, Samsung are offering this same product in the M.2 format, for those who have systems that take those, though only in capacities up to 500GB at this time. The EVO was always Samsung's best price and performance deal, and nothing in this version changes that. Mark Plckavance
A solid investment for anyone with a slow mSATA-capable laptop.
Specifications
• Capacities: 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 1TB(1,000GB)
• Form Factor: mSATA
• Controller: 120/250/500GB = Samsung MGX, 1TB = Samsung MEX
• NAND Memory: Samsung 32 layer 3D V-NAND
• DRAM Cache Memory: 512MB LPDDR3 (120GB-500GB models) or 1GB (1TB) LPDDR2
• Performance:
Sequential Read: Max. 540 MBA
Sequential Write: Max. 520 MBA
4KB Random Read (QD1): Max. 10,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write(QDI): Max. 40,000 IOPS
4KB Random Read(QD32):
Max. 97,000 IOPS(250GB/500GB/1TB)
Max. 95,000 IOPS(120GB)
4KB Random Write(QD32): Max. 88,000 IOPS
• Weight: Max. 8.5g (1TB)
• Power Consumption: Active Read/Write (Av.): Max. 3.5W(1TB)/Max. 4.3W(1TB). Idle: Max. 50mW, Device Sleep: 2mW