Samsung 840 EVO 1TB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Samsung 840 EVO 1TB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. PCMark 88. IOMETER9. Closing Thoughts10. View All Pages

There is no doubt that the Samsung 840 EVO 1TB is a very high performance Solid State Drive able to battle with the fastest products on the market today, however the hottest topic of debate is going to be around the question ‘is a 1TB Solid State Drive really affordable?'.

Not so long ago, many enthusiast users were dreaming of a time when they would be able to get their hands on a 1TB Solid State Drive. A large portion of our readers may say ‘sure, great drive, but it will still cost me £445!‘.

It is a fair point, but I remember reviewing the biggest capacity (at the time) Kingston SSDNowV+ Series 512GB back in September 2010 and it cost £1,099 inc vat. It doesn't require much work to realise that in the space of 3 years, we are now able to get twice the capacity for less than half the price. This isn't even factoring in the fact that the Kingston drive was only rated at 220 MB/s sequential read, and 180 MB/s sequential write. The Samsung 840 EVO 1TB was capable of delivering 550 MB/s and 530 MB/s in the ATTO sequential read and write tests today, respectively.

It makes sense to understand that this 1TB drive is clearly marketed at the enthusiast user who spends a lot of money on components. If you are only budgeting £500 on a new system, then spending almost the same amount on a solid state drive alone doesn't make much sense. The 120GB version of this 840 EVO drive however is only £72 inc vat so for many people it is a solid option. If you are building a high end system, then adding in one of these 1TB drives means no concerns about running out of space for the operating system and any application installs, now or anytime in the future.

We also tested this drive for compatibility inside the Sony Playstation 4, and while it was limited to the SATA 2 internal speeds of the new console it did make a noticeable difference especially with the excellent Assassins Creed BlackFlag. Load times were reduced by around 30-35%, although spending more money on the Solid State Drive than the console itself may be difficult to justify.

If you want one of these drives, then Amazon have stock and the prices have been reduced from £510 to £445.99 inc vat recently. Other options? The Crucial M500 960GB is £378.00 inc vat, but bear in mind it is slower and has a 40GB lower total capacity.

Pros:

• Fantastic performance.
• strong IOPS throughput.
• equally good with incompressible and compressible data.
• Playstation 4 compatibility …. if money is no object.

Cons:

• A smaller capacity will suit a much wider audience.

Kitguru says: A lightning quick 1TB SSD to cater to those high end system builders who don't want to compromise on boot drive storage capacity.

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