Which to buy: 840 EVO, MX100, or 850 EVO?

Hello, I really need an affordable, yet reliable 2.5" SSD. I don't really know much about SSD's, but Sammy & Crucial have been recommended to me. I'm not a power user that writes crazy data, but I still want something that'll last maybe ~5yrs from now.

 

They will all last you 5 years easily

Firstly, there is no 850 EVO it's the 850 PRO which is the king of SSDs right now but it costs an arm and a leg

The best bang for the buck would be the Crucial MX100 it's decent performance + very affordable

If you want slightly better performance, then the EVO and its price are hard to beat.

If you are like me and don't care about the money and purely want the best of the best, then the 850 PRO offers the best performance especially when speaking of real world performance not just synthetic benchmarks. It also gives you 10 years warranty VS the Evo's 3 year warranty.

If it was me and I had some cash to buy an SSD now, I would get the 840 PRO (which I already did if you look at my system specs in my signature) as it is one of the best performers, is very cheap, and very reliable + has a 5 year warranty

Just google Samsung 840 PRO on eBay and see the different prices for the different sizes.

The 256GB 840 PRO is the best performer while the 512GB comes in 2nd place. Don't get a 128GB as that's just too small especially if you do the recommended OP (over-provisioning which is leaving 10% of space unpartitioned on your SSD to help with garbage collection)

 

I've never used a SSD so I'll look into that provisioning stuff. Sounds like I will get a 840 Pro or EVO, whichever I find cheaper. And thanks.

 

The 840 EVO is a great SSD for the price. You can't go wrong there.

People claim the lifespan is much less compared to the 840 PRO or 850 PRO, but rarely do people keep laptops for more than 5 years, let alone run programs 24/7 for that long for performance to begin to diminish. You won't notice any different between the two, in terms of every day performance/application response.

Just grab an 840 EVO and enjoy.

 

tell me what capacity are you looking for so I can find you good SSDs with great value for the money

 

Only 256GB 2.5", and thanks!

 

Then the 840 PRO or 850 PRO is your best bet here for maximum speed you can get out of the SATA III interface and very very reliable thanks to their MLC NAND, way better than the EVO's TLC NAND in terms of reliability and sustained long term performance.

 

These are all considered reliable brands, Crucial, Samsung, SanDisk .

Ranked by price, as of today.
1,Crucial MX 100 256GB $110
2.Samsung 840 EVO 250GB $130
3.SanDidk Extreme II 240GB $147
4.SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB $172
5.Samsung 840 Pro 256GB $187
6.Samsung 850 Pro 256GB $200

Top 3 by performance, the rest aren't close.
Extreme Pro
850 Pro
Extreme II
AnandTech | Bench - SSD
Intel SSD Pro 2500 Series 240GB Encrypted SSD Review - PCMark 8 Consistency Test

Best value, Extreme II
Worst value, 840 Pro

 

Sure go for Sandisk (Extreme II or Pro) - they are sustainably fast + should have around 0.128 Pb (128Tb) resource with 2K erase \ write cycles, while 840 EVO has 1K erase \ write cycles,
and MX100 is at 0.072Pb (72Tb) that in theory means writing about 40Gb per day during 5 years, still all these numbers are talking about the average failure rate %

 

Some recommend and do 25%

 

I do 30% OP as per tilleroftheearth's advice