Final Thoughts

Samsung has yet to disappoint us with ane of its SSDs. Three years ago, the 470 series topped our performance charts and gave the Crucial RealSSD C300 a run for its money. A twelvemonth later, Samsung followed up with its 830 serial, whose extreme performance bested most of the SandForce SF-2281 drives flooding the market place at the fourth dimension. Final yr, of course, we received the venerable 840 Pro, which remains one of the most bonny options if you lot're interested in top-finish performance and reliability.

At present more than than a few generations into the game, Samsung has prepared its best offering to date, pairing TLC storage with two caching mechanisms, including 1 chosen RAPID that can tap into RAM. We weren't impressed with the Evo series or its caching technologies in every test, especially when working with a single large file, but it held its own in most, including our program copy and real-earth application tests, while it managed to pinnacle the graph in our game copy test as well every bit several synthetic benchmarks.

RAPID likewise proved to exist very beneficial in PCMark 7, delivering strong gains in 2 of the four tests nosotros included and providing the best results we've recorded in the starting applications exam. Taking that into consideration, we don't doubt that the Evo's SLC buffer mitigates whatever functioning disadvantages might be associated with the drive's TLC retentivity. Between the raw performance of its NAND parts and the clever blueprint behind its RAPID technology, the Evo tin can look like a PCIe SSD in certain weather.

That'due south unheard of for what could be considered budget-oriented wink drives. The 120GB model is a good value at $109 or $0.90/GB, only we recommend investing in the largest model you can reasonably justify for your needs and upkeep.

Forth with more storage at a improve price, splurging on a bigger model volition get yous faster operation. The 250GB version is currently set up at $183 ($0.73/GB) and the 500GB model is going for $370 ($0.74), which nets yous twice the TurboWrite SLC buffer at 6GB versus 3GB.

Folks with deeper pockets should exist pleased to discover how affordable the college chapters models are, with the 750GB Evo fetching $530 ($0.lxx/GB) and the 1TB variant costing but $650 ($0.65/GB) -- some of the all-time price per gigabyte ratios nosotros've seen for high-end flash drives. However, SSD prices go on to fall and competition is stiff. For example, the 960GB Crucial M500 is $590 ($0.61/GB), though Samsung's Evo series is faster and retains enough of an reward to warrant your attention.

Pros: Quick and undecayed yet roomy and affordable -- everything we've been waiting for in an enthusiast solid state bulldoze.

Cons: Honestly, not much. RAPID caching occupies up to a gig of arrangement memory (for a practiced reason), and it'due south non as affordable as the Crucial M500 but you can't have it all.