Samsung 850 EVO review

Just saw this on Anandtech thought it would be interesting to share. First SSD with 3D TLC NAND. Decent performance and excellent power consumption for most models.

AnandTech | Samsung SSD 850 EVO (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) Review

 

Thank you for posting this, I was waiting for the 850 EVO to be released for a while now. Considering how much of a success the 850 Pro was due to performance and durability, and 840 EVO for it's near 840 Pro performance at much lower price, I expect SSD prices to be driven even lower considering some reviewers of 850 Pro claimed that manufacturing costs per GB will be reduced and the TLC based 850 EVO would be cheaper than anything near it's performance level. I hope we can soon get a 1TB SSD at < $300, I mean some Black Friday deals already put a few SSDs below the $400 mark so it shouldn't be long.

Anyways enough typing for me and time to read the Review!

 

I'm hardly excited.. another crappy TLC SSD from Samsung and a disaster in the waiting just like the 840 Evo...

 

The 850 has a five year warranty and a much longer "guaranteed" lifespan than the 840 EVO. That's a great improvement.

It's just as affordable as the 840 EVO, making it a great SSD for gamers and everyday PC users.

 

Lifespan is not GB/TB's written.

It is the expectation that the component will work as expected in it's primary function (in this case, supposedly as a fast storage device).

Warranty is also not an indication of greatness. In reality warranty only dictates how much of a premium a company can charge for an otherwise inferior product. Sure, the balancing act is to ensure that most units outright 'die' outside of the warranty period. But that is no way indicative of the performance that will be seen by the consumer during their expected lifecycle.


I agree; more TLC junk from Samsung. Also, Anandtech seems to be on a TLC spree with their latest articles pushing for how TLC (from SanDisk too) has magically transformed the storage landscape. Sigh.

No, it hasn't. MLC is still the overall reliability, value and performance winner. By a long shot.

 

I never said lifespan was TB's written, nor did I say that warranty indicates greatness. I said it was an improvement, and good for everyday PC users and gamers.

It's still going to be the best SSD on the market for that price.

 

Yeah right, one of the best selling SSDs, the 840 EVO was a disaster. You guys complaining that it will be junk because it's TLC haven't even read the review yet. 850 EVO is 10X more resistant to errors from nand wear than the 840 EVO, so it will take over 10X the write cycles (In reality it will take much more than that since things aren't linear in the real world) of the 840 EVO for it to slow down by the same %.
If you are saying the lifespan is too low and you had a 120 GB TLC drive fail in the past it is completely your fault (for going cheap). Samsung's 3D V-NAND is 40nm, it should have endurance just as good or even better than any < 20nm MLC drive out there.
As for performance the 500GB and 1TB drives perform similarly to the 850 Pro, even beating it in some cases. Even the 250GB comes close to the 850 Pro, being only slower in rare cases of very heavy useage (stuff only professional users do and the Evo isn't aimed at Pros).

 

I don't understand why people on this forum are against TLC NAND... I think it's great because it's affordable, and it helps keeps prices down of competing brands.

Sure, it won't last 10 years like V-NAND, but who in their right mind expects to keep any piece of technology for that long? If you kept the 850 PRO for 10 years, good for you. But by that time there would have been SSD's 10x faster and better than your 850 PRO. The likelihood of not upgrading in that time frame is extremely low. The only people or entities in a position to argue or complain about lifespan are those with networks or servers that need extended lifespan components. Everyone else is just whining.

 

After owning three 1 TB 840 EVOs, all I can tell you is I will never come near a TLC based SSD EVER again, even if it has 3D NAND , heck even if it has 4D NAND (if they made that) I wouldn't buy it.

TLC based SSDs in my experience are only good to show your friends some cool high benchmarks, put it in the real world performance tests and the MLC based 840/850 PRO will smoke it. I experienced this myself copying large video files from one partition to the other. The EVO was much slower than the 840 PRO at the time of testing.

Additionally, after the popular slow data on old files bug on the 840 EVO, I have huge doubts this will not suffer from the same symptom after sometime and no I don't want to run a tool to re-write data which a) takes a lot of time and b) causes extra writes on the SSDs

MLC FTW

just my 2 cents

 

The 840 EVO was the first consumer SSD to ever use TLC NAND. I'm sure Samsung made some major improvements with the 850 series. I'd be surprised if they didn't.

 

No. The first one was the "standard" 840, which was...duh.

This is coming from someone who used 470/810 as well as 830 Samsungs back in the days and was quite happy with them.

I'll be happy to give 850 Pro a spin. Not 850 EVO, though.

 

I forgot about the regular 840. Go away.

See how fast SSD's get replaced? So fast I forgot. You are all complaining about nothing when complaining about lifespan.

 

Who was complaining about lifespan? I know I wasn't.

If you go to the Anandtech's original review of 840 EVO, you'll find out that even then it was reported that speeds were likely to plummet when the drive was beaten somewhat hard :

Source: AnandTech | Samsung SSD 840 EVO Review: 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB & 1TB Models Tested

So, no, lifespan of TLC nand was not what some of us around here were concerned about.

Performance degradation? Yes.

Questionable consistency? Yes.

I got into the SSD game when Intel X-25E was the king, and will tell you that in many respects - as ancient as these drives are now - they have yet to be beaten on the field of long-term reliability/consistency/dependable performance. Sure, 64GB capacity is almost laughable today - as is SATA II (3.0) standard - but the fact that they perform 100% as well as they did when they were brand new - while not supporting TRIM - makes me tip off my hat to Intel, and even more so to SLC...

To some of us - at least to silly old me - TLC is just another SandForce. Looks great on paper and in synthetic benchmarks, disappointing in real-life use.

My $0.02 only...

 

The second part of my post was for those who were.

 

Yeah; another SF (good summary of TLC so far).


See:
Samsung 840 EVO read speed drops on old-written data in the drive - Page 137

 

+1, totally agree, that's what I've always said, TLC looks king in benchmarks, performs like a first gen SSD in real world heavy workloads. Exactly like the crappy SandForce which only shine with compressable data when most data ISNT compressable! that's how the Kingston cheaters get away with their marketing trick on the box (550 MB Read / 500 MB write [achieved by ATTO Disk Benchmark which uses compressible data]

 

Yeah. Btw, I know you mean compressible data, (not compressed)

 

lol this forum is so full of uninformed people its pathetic and sad. The blind leading the blind.

You guys are following tilleroftheearth who have zero experience with SSDs and very little understanding on SSDs and implications on real life user scenarios.
You guys are grasping on QD32 workloads and use those as examples for the people who doesnt hit the SSD with ridicilous workloads, keep talking down on TLC yet a gazillion tests have revealed the TLC SSD will outlast pretty much any other component in your computer which makes the whole theoretically doom stupid, you have individuals using their time to dig up dirt on forums (lol how pathetic) about some isolated scenario which could have so many reasons to it acting like this.

RIP Notebookreview`s SSDs subforum. Trash subforum

 

yes sorry, post edited

 

Firstly, I respect tilleroftheearch as to me, he is the SSD doctor. The amount of personalized responses which he spent a lot of time typing to every question I asked was very impressive and informative.

When I ask a simple question, he is one of the first to pop in with a very concise answer and anything he says, he backs up with proof (ie. links)

But regardless, going back to the topic. I am a person who has owned two 840 EVO 1TB in addition to the current mSATA 840 EVO 1TB that I currently have in my sig. When I replaced the 1TBG 840 EVOs I immediately felt a slight snapiness increase in my system. Furthermore, launching programs like Photoshop or Illustrator, copying my large videos library from one folder to another, always the 840 PRO had higher performance and it was sustained performance each and everytime I throw anything at it. Although, the EVO beat the 840 PRO 512GB slightly in benchmarks, in real world, I was happier with the 840 PRO. Now with the 850 PRO, it's even better, but I know that's not a fair comparison with the 840 EVO.

The 840 EVO has left a sour memory in my head after the slow speed on old data bug which Samsung acknowledged and issued a fix, but the fix again, takes ages to perform which I am not ready to do every 3 months since I have lots of data which means it would take a lot of time to rewrite them to get the performance back and that would only increase the wear on the SSD which already is known to have less long term life span compared to MLC drives

 

Just because one person spends his whole life on this forum posting (inaccurate) advices about which drives are the fastest, cherry pick results from some review, search around forums for dirt about Samsung drives, doesnt make him a "doctor"

Samsung acknowledged the EVO problems. It was a BUG, not a error that was a broad characteristic for the SSD itself, and was fixed with a firmware update. You understand the difference between a bug and a hardware problem? One can be fixed by patching the software, the other one have no fix.
This can be applicable to these stupid workloads thats being posted on this forum as if they mean anything. With a SSD you have NAND, a controller and firmware that control how the SSD perform. One manufacture may tweak his software and the controller`s speed toward server based workloads. Another manufacture sacrifice this by concentrating on other user scenarios which their customer base will encounter on a everyday basis. Take some Intel drives and compare them against many many other SSD OEMs out there. The Intel drives are fast with sick workloads but sucks in some real life light workloads.

 

In your opinion, that is. And everyone has one...

Mine - in case that anyone is interested - is quite simple: SLC>MLC>TLC presuming all other things being equal, which means that I'd rather go for a MLC drive with a non-SF controller than with a SLC drive that sports one. At current prices here in the U.S. I see absolutely zero reason to purchase a TLC-based drive, but to each their own.

I don't recall anyone - not in this thread anyway - questioning the longevity of the TLC nand, which makes your point...moot, shall we say?

Because some of us have the nerve to see the things differently - based on their own experiences which are definitely limited and imperfect since they're human - than yourself?

 

Cloudfire,

given that I am uninformed and have never used an ssd in my life...

What are your contributions to this forum besides your constant assuming and whining attitude of how little I know?


The best argument you can provide to the forum is not one that tries to discount the person, me, but rather the idea.

Facts:
The TLC EVO's simply suck. Anyone of my clients who have used one knows it first hand. Where I'm stuck with a few 1TB examples of this garbage tech is because I missed the return period (because they performed good enough within 7 days...). The fix that Samsung issued has been shown to have not fixed the issue for many (see my previous posts for the links). In my own case, the performance has come back, but the classic Sammy lagginess that I associate with all their SSD's shows up even more pronounced now (after the fix). I wanted to like what Samsung offers... but they keep shooting themselves in the head with regards to what real performance (and high capacity) should be.


So go ahead; give us actual facts about the superiority of TLC. Nobody is quoting QD32 benchmarks as to the reason TLC should be avoided except you (so stop spreading lies).


The facts are this:
You, or I, do not know what issues (if any) the just released 850 EVO will surprise us with. All we can know though is that the original TLC Samsung 840 model (which has not received any official firmware fix as of yet) nor the 840 EV0 (which has received a firmware update for it's issues) has been fixed to all users satisfaction. The safe assumption at this point is to tread softly with Samsung or any other manufacturer that offers TLC based SSD's.

In the next couple of years, I'll change my mind if TLC is finally past it's birthing pains. But right now, to recommend TLC is to severe any business relationships with my clients who depend on me for solid advice on tech matters. And also put a question in the minds of people who browse the forums here too, about my knowledge about such matters too.


If you want to have a grownup conversation; lets do it. But stop attacking me personally just because my facts are indisputable and also happen to be the opposite of what you want reality to be.

 

840 Evo fix is supposed to be a one-time-only fix, no need to run it every 3 months supposedly - I'm testing this at the moment with my 840 Evo (but only had it 3 weeks!). Most reports of forum users I've seen say 840 Evo performance is now fixed & has remained fixed for them. I think the Evo's are fine for general consumer use, I think they're good value, but not the best choice for really demanding sustained workloads.

 

I have no idea what tiller wrote. Not gonna waste my time reading it either.
I`m guessing it is about blablabla workloads blablabla TLC sucks blablabla I love Sandisk SSDs blablabla




Sorry about my outburst but sometime visiting this subforum gets the best of me. Carry on with your insightful TLC hate discussions. I`m out

 

Yeah; best way to deal with life: hide your head in the sand. And, assume you know everything too.

 

After you've done the firmware update and performance fix, you can't do it again because the software won't allow it. Maybe it will if you reinstall Windows (haven't tried), but I can confirm no further issues on my EVO, either in OS X or Windows, after applying the updates.

 

Cool, good news, how long have you been running it for since you applied the fix? Did you have the slowdowns before the fix too?

 

Since the day they released it, so around mid-October IIRC.

 

Excellent, that's encouraging! (FYI, Magician 4.5 released recently with update to RAPID mode v2.1 - 850 Evo support plus removal of some previous conflicts with Intel Rapid Storage Technology when using RAPID according to Anandtech)

 

This thread blew up fast, lol. Gotta love this forum.

I agree with Cloud. You really do need to stop suggesting things like partitioning 30% (or more) of empty space on a new SSD in order to extend its life. That's ridiculous. All drives come "pre-provisioned" from the factory. 256GB SSD's do not have 256GB's of usable space. You then tell people they need to subtract another 30% or more... Really? That leaves approximately 154GB's of space, and we haven't even installed Winblows.

And in regards to the whole "NAND war" we've started on this forum - it's probably one of the most pointless topics to argue over. I'm sure the 850 EVO will be just fine.

 

I thought that lost space is the space lost because of how manufacturers calculate the GB, as in, they calculate 1000MB = 1GB whereas Windows calculates 1GB=1024MB (correct me if Im wrong)

I was told on OC forum that Samsung SSDs do not have factory OP

 

The Magician software handles provisioning.

There's already dedicated space for TRIM and whatnot. In layman's terms, it's basically setup to last around however long the warranty lasts.

 

That's part of it, but most SSDs also include built-in over provisioning that ranges in the area of 5-12%, depending on model.

The 840 EVO was the first Samsung SSD to include factory over provisioning, and you can use the Magician software to increase the amount further.

 

I know that, and it gives 10% OP as the recommended. But that's not factory OP. Factory OP is unpartitioned space you don't even have access to.

I thought a while back Anandtech did a test showing that an SSD OPed by 25% gives more sustained performance in heavy workloads

AnandTech | Exploring the Relationship Between Spare Area and Performance Consistency in Modern SSDs

 

Its quite telling from all of tilleroftheearths posts that he have zero first hand experience with SSDs.

You dont get any more speed on everyday tasks with additional provisioning. Its a reason why Anandtech only test the consistency based on % provisioning with QD32 workloads.
If they used something you and me would encounter with our usage, ie QD1-5 tops (5 disk operations at the same time!), they would see little to no gain. So they spice up the reviews since the drives are so similar today, to make the reviews a little more "interesting", but not applicable to 99% of users. Its just theory, with little bearing, like TLC life expectancy testing.

But of course, it give more to people like tiller to cherrypick results and persuade people to buy SSDs that is good at server workloads but you may get a slower drive than what you should have for your usage if someone gave you a honest advice.

I know Sandisk was pretty active in this forum earlier and it wouldnt surprise me if they hired or talked people like tiller to spend time on this forum to advertise their Extreme SSDs. Hidden advertisement based on wrong advice, and of course downtalking about the competitor Samsung. It kinda fits tillers posts. Maybe Im crazy here, maybe Im not, but I tell you there are better SSDs out there than Sandisk and this guy is spending far too much time on this forum trying to convince people (based on wrong advice) to buy the darn Sandisk Extreme SSDs

 

Basically what I was just about to write, well said.

 

Workloads that the overwhelming majority of users will never, ever see. And for those that do, there are plenty of SSDs designed with that in mind.

 

Unless you're downloading hundreds of GB's of pRoN daily, you don't need to OP anything.

Spoiler

 

256 / cube(1.024)
238.4185791015625

There is no over-provision space built into the Samsung 840 Pro.

Samsung recommends a minimum of 10% OP for general workloads and up to 50% for heavy workloads, 25% is a sweet spot.

You never lose space by over provisioning.

Take an example of a 2 by 4 piece of wood 12' long and mark it at 10' (not cut). You still have 2 feet left to extend into should a situation require it.

 

Does the EVO series have OP? I thought they did.

 

Yep, I just found out now that the 840 series (apart from the pro) have overprovisioning built in, see following link, also talks about the benefit of over provisioning (although from that link it doesn't seem to make a distinction between over provisioning & just leaving free space on the drive, except if you OP then there's no chance of accidentally filling the drive to the hilt):
Maximize SSD Lifetime and Performance With Over-Provisioning | Samsung SSD

I went with 10% over provisioning, but that's just because I saw it as a recommendation in the Magician software, and I'm not using all the space anyway - so what the hell!

 

Thanks for clearing that up. :thumbsup:

Yeah, 10% isn't bad. I was just saying that Till may be exaggerating a bit when he suggests people need like 30% or more, lol.

 

Yep, the way I understand it, the heavier the workload then the more OP to leave to help with sustained write performance. (But from that article seems like you can just leave it as free space rather than bother OP'ing).

 

Exactly, the EVO is a great drive for most consumers, it isn't meant for heavy usage such as copying large video files from one folder to another on the same SSD but a different partition on it (great way to accelerate the ageing process of an SSD if that's what you want). As for tilleroftheearth bringing up recommendations to clients, I want to remind everyone that Samsung NEVER intended for their consumer drives, especially the EVO line, to be used for commercial purposes (that's what their SSD 845DC Pro line is for and the server SSDs for those that can afford). I expect the 850 EVO to have at least twice the endurance, and be multiple times better at preserving it's performance while compared to the 840 EVO (it probably will end up being just as good or at least better than most sub 20nm MLC NAND based SSDs). For those who want more there is always the 850 Pro, offering the best SATA3 performance but at a premium. As for most who want a fast and large OS drive that will replace their only storage drive in their notebook the 850 EVO will perform similar to an 850 Pro for only 66% of it's cost once the price drops.

 

Yeah, I don't believe TLC NAND was designed with that in mind. It was obviously designed to allow an affordable and easy transition from HDD's to SSD's for the basic consumer. It's basically there to help the market adjust or adapt to the inevitable.

 

It's not so easy for a lot people to figure out what is best for them in the long run. Like waxing a car, do you need to do it more than twice a year? In some cases, yes... differing conditions and elements will push the limits of the product and subject the paint to excessive wear.

Don't shoot the messenger or the message. Even if it is wrong there is something to be learned from it. I think most people want to be informed, not dumbed down, otherwise they wouldn't be here trying to figure things out... they would just call the geek squad and say fix it and end up with what they worked hard for and deserve.

Anyone who comes here wanting to learn shouldn't have to wade through slights aimed at an individual(s), they can sort through the posts and determine for themselves what will meet their expectations.

 

That's for consumers who don't care (consumer drive, not pro), they just plop it in and run... the drive will still hold up to getting filled and still have some set aside reserves to replace inevitable bad blocks and be able to contend with wear leveling operations.

 

FWIW SanDisk's Extreme Pro seems to be pretty decent, the snappiness is comparable (actually slightly better) than the 840 Evo, likely due to improved firmware and a higher clocked controller. The Extreme II on the other hand did feel a bit lethargic.

 

Sandisk Extreme SSDs is far from slow or bad. They are up there among the top contenders and is very fast. I havent said anything else either.
But the thing is that Samsung 850 Pro is a much better choice than Sandisk Extreme (1&2) and the 850 is balanced both for the stupid workloads and for the Average Joe. It offer best performance for both users and have been covered extensively by a huge number of reviews.
Samsung EVO SSDs is not for server workloads etc, but it should be just as good in light workloads, QD less than 5, which 99% of us will encounter every day.

So tiller`s bashing of Samsung drives is 101% unjustified and just dead wrong. You get a 850 Pro for the same price as a Sandisk Extreme 1 and cheaper than Extreme 2. You get better life expectancy if one should keep repeating that argument due to 3D NAND (which Sandisk doesnt have)

Here is a recent review of a ton of SSDs if you want to catch up.
http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/5724/ssd-mega-round-up-sixty-256512-sata600-ssds-tested