Samsung hasn't stopped impressing me in the SSD space. The early Samsung SSDs weren't very good, but ever since the introduction of the SSD 830 Samsung has been doing a brilliant job and has been setting the bar for performance, cost and reliability. The SSD 840 specifically showed what properly executed vertical integration can really do as Samsung was the first manufacturer to utilize TLC NAND in a client SSD. It took a whopping two years before the rest of the industry was able to follow Samsung's footsteps and even today SanDisk is still the only other vendor with a TLC SSD.

While getting an early lead on TLC NAND was a major win for Samsung and a showcase of its engineering talent, the real bombshell was dropped a year later at Flash Memory Summit 2013. For years it had been known that traditional NAND scaling would soon come to an end and that there is an alternate way of scaling in the horizon. As the first manufacturer in the world, Samsung announced that it had begun the mass production of its 128Gbit 24-layer 3D V-NAND.

It took another year before V-NAND found its way into a retail product, but it acquitted all of its promises when it finally did. The SSD 850 Pro is hands down the fastest SATA SSD on the market and it's also backed up by an industry-leading warranty and endurance rating – all which is thanks to V-NAND.

The SSD 850 Pro excels in performance and features, but given its high-end focus it's not a cost efficient solution for the majority of consumers. At this year's Flash Memory Summit, Samsung teased us about an upcoming TLC V-NAND SSD, which would solve the cost issue while still providing all the benefits of 3D NAND technology. The waiting is now over and the drive is (unsurprisingly) called the SSD 850 EVO.

In terms of capacities the 850 EVO lineup is similar to the 840 EVO. The only difference is that the 850 EVO drops the 750GB model, which from what I've heard wasn't a very popular model and to be honest it was kind of an odd middle capacity that generally wasn't price competitive against the 500GB and 1TB models. Initially I was told that the 850 EVO would come in 2TB capacity as well, but later on Samsung opted against it due to the limited demand. Samsung has always been after the high volume markets, so I see the logic behind the decision not to release a 2TB model just yet as its price would drive most people away. The good news, however, is that Samsung has the technology to bring a 2TB drive to the market.

Samsung SSD 850 EVO Specifications
Capacity 120GB 250GB 500GB 1TB
Controller Samsung MGX Samsung MEX
NAND Samsung 128Gbit 40nm TLC V-NAND
DRAM (LPDDR2) 256MB 512MB 1GB
Sequential Read 540MB/s 540MB/s 540MB/s 540MB/s
Sequential Write 520MB/s 520MB/s 520MB/s 520MB/s
4KB Random Read 94K IOPS 97K IOPS 98K IOPS 98K IOPS
4KB Random Write 88K IOPS 88K IOPS 90K IOPS 90K IOPS
DevSleep Power Consumption 2mW 2mW 2mW 4mW
Slumber Power Consumption 50mW
Active Power Consumption (Read/Write) Max 3.7W / 4.4W
Encryption AES-256, TCG Opal 2.0, IEEE-1667 (eDrive)
Endurance 75TB (41GB/day) 150TB (82GB/day)
Warranty Five years

The first hint of the capability of TLC V-NAND is the endurance ratings. The 120GB and 250GB capacities are rated at 75TB, which is fairly average, but the 500GB and 1TB models match up with the 850 Pro with their 150TB write endurance. I'll be talking a bit more about the NAND and testing its P/E cycle rating on the following pages, but it's clear that 3D NAND technology is taking TLC NAND to a whole new level in terms of endurance. Thanks to the more durable NAND, Samsung is also upping the warranty from three to five years, which is always a welcome upgrade and I think too many vendors have been fixated on three-year warranties even though NAND endurance has never been the limiting factor.

The new MGX controller in 120GB 850 EVO

In addition to the NAND, the 850 EVO sees an evolution in the controller. The 120GB, 250GB and 500GB models now come with a newer generation MGX controller, although unfortunately I have very few details as Samsung couldn't get me the information about the new controller ahead of the embargo lift. I've heard the MGX is a dual core design, whereas the MEX in the 1TB model (and 840 EVO & 850 Pro) features three ARM Cortex R4 cores. The reason behind the change is increased power efficiency and supposedly the third core isn't needed with the smaller capacities as there are less pages/blocks to track and thus NAND management requires less processing power. I'm guessing that the MGX is also manufactured with a smaller process node and the two cores run at a higher clock speed, but for now I don't have any concrete information backing that up.

The 850 EVO also features the common Samsung feature set. DevSleep, hardware-accelerated encryption (TCG Opal 2.0 & IEEE-1667) and RAPID are all supported. With the 850 Pro Samsung introduced RAPID 2.0 that upped the maximum RAM allocation to 4GB (with 16GB or more RAM installed in the system) and as one would expect the 850 EVO supports the updated version of RAPID. In fact, with the release of Magician 4.5 (included on the CD that is found in the retail package), RAPID sees an update to 2.1 version, although this is merely an incremental update with enhanced error handling and fixed compatibility issues with Intel's Rapid Storage Technology drivers.

Pricing

The always-so-important question is the price. All modern SSDs are relatively good (especially when compared against what we had three years ago), so for the majority of buyers the key factor is the price. Lately we have seen some very aggressive pricing from the likes of Crucial and SanDisk, and I was expecting that the 850 EVO would be Samsung's answer to that.

Samsung SSD 850 EVO MSRPs
Capacity 120GB 250GB 500GB 1TB
MSRP $100 $150 $270 $500

Unfortunately, the MSRPs at least are fairly high. I was told that the higher production costs of V-NAND necessitate the higher prices, which is why Samsung can't go directly against the MX100 and Ultra II, but in return Samsung offers a longer warranty, higher endurance and better performance (we will find out about the last one soon). That said, MSRPs have never been great indicators of final street prices and we may see the 850 EVO become more competitive eventually.

Test Systems

For AnandTech Storage Benches, performance consistency, random and sequential performance, performance vs transfer size and load power consumption we use the following system:

CPU Intel Core i5-2500K running at 3.3GHz (Turbo & EIST enabled)
Motherboard ASRock Z68 Pro3
Chipset Intel Z68
Chipset Drivers Intel 9.1.1.1015 + Intel RST 10.2
Memory G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3-1600 4 x 8GB (9-9-9-24)
Video Card Palit GeForce GTX 770 JetStream 2GB GDDR5 (1150MHz core clock; 3505MHz GDDR5 effective)
Video Drivers NVIDIA GeForce 332.21 WHQL
Desktop Resolution 1920 x 1080
OS Windows 7 x64

Thanks to G.Skill for the RipjawsX 32GB DDR3 DRAM kit

For slumber power testing we used a different system:

CPU Intel Core i7-4770K running at 3.3GHz (Turbo & EIST enabled, C-states disabled)
Motherboard ASUS Z87 Deluxe (BIOS 1707)
Chipset Intel Z87
Chipset Drivers Intel 9.4.0.1026 + Intel RST 12.9
Memory Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1866 2x8GB (9-10-9-27 2T)
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 4600
Graphics Drivers 15.33.8.64.3345
Desktop Resolution 1920 x 1080
OS Windows 7 x64
Inside The Drives & Updated TurboWrite
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  • sylerner - Thursday, August 13, 2015 - link

    The over-provisioning figures in the article are larger than the actual over-provisioning values.

    The source of error is failure to account for the flash memory used for TurboWrite.

    The correct values are:
    120GB: 10.6%
    250GB, 500GB and 1TB: 8.0%
  • Lonerski - Sunday, January 31, 2016 - link

    Did you use Rapid Mode in those benches ?
  • CricDasher - Thursday, March 3, 2016 - link

    Samsung SSD 850 Evo is a life-changer for anyone who uses it. With the sleek and beautiful build quality, Evo 850 does obviously come with a great price tag.

    There are of course different capacities of the given product, but I preferred to use the 120 GB version, largely due to the relatively low price and my actual need of owning an SSD.

    My major requirement was to install the Operating System and few other mostly used applications inside the SSD, so that the whole computer looks so fast. Samsung Evo 850 120 GB SSD has done the job fantastically for me so far and I highly recommend this product to everyone.

    Out of the sellers online, GearBest seems to offer the best package since GB is a trusted source of products. They are offering a flash sale at the moment and you may try it to get it for a relatively a low price.

    http://www.gearbest.com/hdd-ssd/pp_311494.html?vip...
  • Budburnicus - Friday, March 11, 2016 - link

    Samsung OWNS the SSD market! When I can buy an 850 EVO 500 GB model for just $110 and get for all intents and purposes, the BEST possible speed from a SATA 6 drive - there is REALLY NO POINT in buying ANY other brand!

    I mean the 850 EVO keeps up with, and sometimes even SURPASSES the 850 PRO - often in ways that will benefit the average power user/gamer more!

    I wonder how much of that is due to the 6 GB of SLC write cache - as the 850 PRO series has no SLC NAND whatsoever!

    Also, once the "Magical" storage capacity of 480 GB and above is reached, again, for JUST $110 - not only is that more than sufficient to hold my OS and all the games I play, but all SSDs tend to perform best at 480 GB and above, I would say for the 850 EVO series, this is DOUBLY TRUE! Due to the fact that the 500 GB model has a full 6 GB of SLC Turbo-write NAND (compared to 3 for the 250 and 120) - but it also has a full 512 MB of DDR3L on it!

    I dunno why Anandtech has it listed as DDR2L memory, but it is indeed DDR3L RAM on ALL Samsung 850 series drives!
  • Tornadotuan - Friday, July 8, 2016 - link

    Hi Hardware Community,
    I know this article is quite outdated right now, nevertheless the actual topic of the authors "Final Words" bug me right now. Especially now that enough time for longtime-endurance tests has passed.

    Anyway, I can´t choose between the Samsung EVO 850 1TB v2 (289€) and die SanDisk Extreme 960GB (281€).
    So pricewise the "Pro" is even cheaper right now compared to the Samsung. But there are some obvious differences:

    - TLC 3D V-NAND vs. MLC Planar
    - 5 years vs. 10 years warranty
    - 150 TBW vs. 80 TBW
    - higher Peak vs. consistency
    - Samsung Bugging vs. sudden death drives

    My usage:
    - Client for everything: gaming, programming, office, multimedia - averything
    - gonna split it in system and data-partition
    - gonne be in laptop that´s used as desktop
    - battery is wasted, so no concern about power consumption

    So, usually I use hardware until it´s broken so meaning about 8-10 years.
    Still I want steady performance without sudden decline in speed like with the EVO 840 :C
    I´d be really glad, if you could tell me your opinion on this :)
  • Robbin1111 - Saturday, April 28, 2018 - link

    Awesome drivers! Anyone has a code for this? I checked several sites, like
    https://www.retailmenot.com/coupons/samsung,
    https://dealspure.com/Samsung-Electronics-Promo-Co...

    but couldn't find one. My mom has an aging Dell D830, which is very slow and I'm looking for a reasonably priced replacement, and I think this driver is great.
  • rocky12345 - Thursday, January 30, 2020 - link

    Yes this is a older review but just posting in 2020 on how my Samsung 850 EVO 500Gb has stood up to the wear & tear of every day computing. I have had my drive since 2015 in a computer that is on for many hours a day since I got the drive.

    The system gets used a lot so everything gets a really nice work out everyday. According to the Samsung software my drive is only at 2% of it's rated endurance lifespan. Not to bad for a drive that gets hit pretty hard everyday with reads and writes and to still have 98% life endurance left after all these years of use.

    I read this review back in 2014 and it was one of the reasons I decided to get this drive for my system. I just came from a new write up form this site talking about a Midrive setup. What got me thinking about TLC nand was not the write up itself but a comment from a user and how they were saying just how bad QLC & TLC nand was and how they had low endurance lifespans.

    Am I missing something here? My drive has TLC 3D V-nand made by Samsung and the drive is still at 98% endurance left on the SSD. Is Samsung's 3D V-nand better than regular TLC chips and lasts longer because of it. Yes my drive is getting up there in age and I plan on replacing it once I do a full system update and I will be getting a much faster NVMe PCI-e 4.0 drive.

    As for the Samsung SSD I probably will use it to cache my 4 4TB hard drives since AMD has that caching setup in their platform and I can still find a good use for the Sata SSD I currently have. For now it is very snappy and the system feels very fast still with things such as Chrome or Firefox opening in half a second or Windows still booting up in a mere 7 seconds right after the bios post screen to the desktop so not worried about speed just quite yet.

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