Model: Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: Samsung Electronics
Provided By: Samsung America

Samsung Electronics has been a leader in the electronics industry for more than 30 years. Since the introduction of their first television in 1970, this Korean company has grown to become one of the world's leading electronics manufacturers, offering everything from tiny semiconductors to large home appliances. Samsung is no stranger to the storage industry either. Along with an assortment of DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives, the company offers both hard drive and flash based storage solutions for the portable and desktop computer markets.

Samsung is also one of the world's leaders in advanced memory technology. Last fall, the company began mass producing the industry’s first three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory. To break through the scaling limit for existing NAND flash technology, 3D V-NAND utilizes Samsung’s proprietary vertical cell structure based on 3D Charge Trap Flash (CTF) technology and vertical interconnect process technology to link the 3D cell array. By applying both of these technologies, Samsung’s 3D V-NAND offers anywhere from two to ten times the reliability and twice the write performance of conventional 10nm-class floating gate NAND flash memory.

One of the first consumer-oriented products to take advantage of 3D V-NAND is Samsung's new 850 PRO SSD. First unveiled at the 2014 Samsung SSD Global Summit in Seoul, the 850 PRO is ideal for use in high-end PCs and workstations. The drive is powered by Samsung's own 3-core MEX controller and is available with up to 1TB of their second generation, 32-layer 3D V-NAND flash. The 850 PRO also supports Device Sleep (DEVSLP) for lower power consumption as well as self-encrypting drive (SED) technology that is TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 compliant. To top it all off, it supports Samsung's RAPID (Real-time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data) technology. By using free PC memory as a cache, RAPID can push the performance of the SSD beyond the limits of the current SATA specification.

The 850 PRO is available in a wide range of capacities from 128GB up to a massive 1TB. For this review, Samsung sent us the 256GB version of the drive which is capable of delivering up to 550 MB/s sequential read and 520 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 100,000 random read and 90,000 random write IOPS.

   Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB Solid State Drive
General Specifications
Model Number MZ-7KE256BW
Capacity 256GB
Flash Type Samsung Samsung 32 layer 3D V-NAND
Controller Samsung MEX S4LN045X01-8030
Cache 512MB LPDDR2 SDRAM
Form Factor 2.5-inch
Interface SATA III 6Gb/s

Performance
Sequential Read 550 MB/s Max
Sequential Write 520 MB/s Max
4K Random Read (QD1) 10,000 IOPS
4K Random Write (QD1) 36,000 IOPS
4K Random Read (QD32) 100,000 IOPS
4K Random Write (QD32) 90,000 IOPS

Reliability
MTBF 2 million hours
Endurance 150TBW (30,000 P/E Cycles)

Power Consumption
Active Read (Average) 3.3 Watt
Active Write (Average) 3.0 Watt
Idle 0.4 Watt
Device Sleep 2 mW

Environmental
Temperature (Operating) 0 ºC to 70 ºC
Temperature (Non-Operating) -40 ºC to 85 ºC
Humidity 5% to 95%, non-condensing
Shock 1500G & 0.5ms (Half sine)
Vibration (Non-operating) 20~2000Hz, 20G

Dimensions and Weight
Dimensions 100 x 69.85 x 6.8 mm
Weight 66g

Other Features
Supports RAPID technology
Includes SSD Magician and Data Migration software
AES 256-bit full disk encryption
TCG Opal and eDrive IEEE 1667 standards compliant
Supports TRIM, SMART and Garbage Collection
DEVSLP power mode
10 year warranty

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the 850 PRO has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Samsung's new SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the 850 PRO have what it takes? Can it deliver the performance and features that we've come to expect from Samsung? Keep reading as we find out.



 

The 850 PRO comes in a small black box. While there aren't a lot of details on the front, the back of the box lists many of the drive's features as well as its specifications. Inside, you'll find the SSD, warranty statement, installation guide and a couple of "Samsung SSD Activated" stickers for your computer's case. According to Newegg, the drive is also supposed to come with a software and manual CD but for whatever reason, our drive did not come with one. Nevertheless, Samsung's SSD Magician and Data Migration software can be downloaded from their website.

Physical Features:

Like Samsung's previous SSDs, the 850 PRO is very well constructed. The drive's outer casing is made entirely out of aluminum and is very strong and lightweight. The SSD 850 PRO also shares the same black color scheme found on the SSD 840 and SSD 840 Pro. However, instead of an orange square, the one on the 850 PRO is red.

Upon opening the case, I was a bit surprised to see how small the 850 PRO's PCB was. Instead of using a regular size PCB, Samsung has placed a 1.8" form factor PCB inside of a 2.5" case.

Like the 840 EVO, the 840 PRO uses Samsung's own S4LN045X01-8030 controller. Developed entirely in house, this proprietary, triple-core MEX controller excels at multi-tasking. Based on an ARM Cortex R4 (400MHz) controller, its three CPU cores can execute multiple instructions such as reading data, writing data and optimization.

For the 256GB version of the 850 PRO, Samsung used their own 32-layer 3D V-NAND flash chips. Looking at the pictures above, you can see that there are two 64GB K9HQGY8S5M chips on either side of the PCB. The drive also has a single 512GB K4P4G324EQ-FGC2 LPDDR2 DRAM memory chip that is used for caching.


The Samsung Magician software is designed to help users easily manage the health and performance of their Samsung SSD. From the main screen, users can check the health of their drives and view information like the serial number, firmware, capacity and the total bytes written. This screen also shows whether or not AHCI mode has been activated as well as the speed of the SATA interface.

Magician also gives users the ability to benchmark their drives and optimize the performance by forcing TRIM and Garbage Collection to run. In addition to this, users can download and apply firmware updates using the software.

Most operating systems are optimized for traditional hard drives. The OS Optimization menu provides options that help you configure your OS to work best with your SSD. Additionally, the Over Provisioning menu gives you the ability to optimize the performance and lifespan of your drive by resizing the partitions.

The Secure Erase feature provides the option to delete all data on an SSD in a way that it can never be recovered, restoring the drive to its original performance. Magician gives you the option to do this from within Windows. Otherwise, if your SSD is in a frozen state, you can create a bootable USB drive, CD or DVD.

One of the advanced features in Samsung's Magician software is RAPID (Real-time Accelerated Processing of I/O Data) Mode. When enabled, RAPID mode is inserted as a filter driver in the Windows storage stack. The driver actively monitors all storage-related activity between and among the operating system, user applications and the SSD. The RAPID technology analyzes system traffic and leverages spare system resources (DRAM and CPU) to deliver read acceleration through intelligent caching of hot data and write optimization through tight coordination with the SSD.

The other advanced feature deals with Data Security. From here, users can check and see what security features their drive supports and view its current settings. Looking at the screenshot below you can see that like the 840 EVO and 840 EVO mSATA, the 850 Pro offers support for Class 0, TCG/Opal and Encrypted Drive.


The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.

To test the performance of Samsung's 256GB SSD 850 Pro, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 4.61, Anvil's Storage Utilities and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Plextor PX-256M6S, Toshiba Q Series Pro, Plextor PX-256M6M, Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA, OCZ Vector 150, OCZ Vertex 450, Silicon Power Slim S55, Samsung SSD 840 EVO, Seagate 600 SSD, SanDisk Extreme II, Plextor PX-256M5M, OCZ Vector, Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840 Pro and Samsung SSD 840.

As I mentioned earlier, the 850 PRO is based on Samsung's MEX (S4LN045X01-8030) controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:

First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode)

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB

According to Samsung, the 256GB 850 PRO is capable of reading at 550 MB/s and writing at 520 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed well, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests. With RAPID mode enabled, these numbers increased considerably. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the 850 PRO was able to read at 4,515 MB/s and write at 3,316 MB/s.

HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:

Next, I used HD Tach to test the 850 PRO's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode)

Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the 850 PRO had average read and write speeds of 443.3 MB/s and 407.8 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 392.0 MB/s. This time around, RAPID mode had very little effect on the drive's performance. Most likely, this is due to the way HD Tach bypasses the file system when performing its read and write tests.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:

I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the 850 PRO's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode)

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB

When tested with ATTO, the 850 PRO's read speeds topped out at about 564 MB/s and its write speeds at 536 MB/s. Here too, RAPID mode had very little impact on the drive's write speed. However, with it enabled, the 850 PRO was able to read at nearly 2,671 MB/s.


AS SSD:

AS SSD is a relatively new benchmark designed specifically for solid state drives. The application contains five synthetic tests used to determine the sequential and random read and write performance of a drive.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode)

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB

AS SSD also includes a copy benchmark. This test copies an ISO (two large files), program (many small files) and game (small and large files), returning the speed and duration of each.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode)

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB

HD Tune Pro 4.61:

Next, I ran a series of tests using HD Tune Pro. This hard disk utility measures a drive's performance by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its access time, burst rate and CPU usage. For this review, I'm also going to use it to benchmark the 850 PRO's random read and write speeds, random access times and the number of operations per second.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - HD Tune Read Benchmark

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode) - HD Tune Read Benchmark

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB - HD Tune Read Benchmark

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB - HD Tune Read Benchmark


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - HD Tune Write Benchmark

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode) - HD Tune Write Benchmark

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB - HD Tune Write Benchmark

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB - HD Tune Write Benchmark

The 850 PRO performed very well when benchmarked with HD Tune. The drive had average read and write speeds of 498.6 MB/s and 474.8 MB/s, respectively, and a burst rate of 276.7 MB/s when reading. Surprisingly, RAPID mode had very little impact on the drive's read speed. However, it was slightly faster when writing.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - HD Tune Random Access Read

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode) - HD Tune Random Access Read

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB - HD Tune Random Access Read

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB - HD Tune Random Access Readd


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - HD Tune Random Access Write

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode) - HD Tune Random Access Write

Samsung SSD 840 Evo 750GB - HD Tune Random Access Write

Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB - HD Tune Random Access Write

The 850 PRO didn't disappoint when doing random reads and writes. When writing 4KB blocks, it reached 21,878 IOPS and had an average speed of 85.461 MB/s. The drive was slightly faster when reading, reaching 24,646 IOPS with an average speed of 96.275 MB/s. As you can see, RAPID mode gave the 850 PRO's random read and write performance a considerable boost. With it enabled, the drive reached 159,033 random read IOPS and 128,419 random write IOPS.


Anvil's Storage Utilities:

Anvil's Storage Utilities is another new benchmark designed with SSDs in mind. The standard storage benchmark measures a drive's performance by testing its transfer speeds, access times and IOPS.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB (RAPID Mode)

Iometer:

Lastly, I ran a series of tests using Iometer. This tool can be configured to benchmark a number of things. In this case, I used it to measure the 850 PRO's read and write speeds and the number of operations per second. The tests were run using random bytes and a queue depth of 3.

The 256GB 850 PRO's performance was very similar to what we saw in our other tests. The drive was able to read at 538.03 MB/s and write at 510.53 MB/s. With RAPID mode enabled, its read and write speeds jumped to 602.9 MB/s and 829.81 MB/s, respectively.

The 850 PRO also performed very well when doing random reads and writes. In our tests, the drive was able to read at 179.89 MB/s and write at 337.79 MB/s. This by itself is impressive, but with RAPID mode enabled, its random write speed jumped to 391.97 MB/s.

According to Samsung, the 256GB 850 PRO is capable of 100,000 IOPS when reading and 90,000 IOPS when writing 4K blocks. In our tests, the drive reached 46,051 random read IOPS and 86,474 random write IOPS. RAPID mode had little impact on the 850 PRO's random read performance. However, with it enabled, the drive was able to reach 100,345 random write IOPS.


TRIM Performance:

While SSDs offer many benefits, there are some downsides to using flash memory. One of the biggest issues people run into is performance degradation. Over time, an SSD will run out of fresh blocks and will have to write over data the file system has marked as deleted. This procedure is very complicated and can slow an SSD's write speeds considerably.

To fix this problem, most manufacturers have added TRIM support to their SSDs. The TRIM command allows an operating system, such as Windows 7, to tell an SSD which data blocks are no longer in use. Using this information, the drive pro-actively erases these blocks and adds them to the free block pool.

To test the 840 PRO's TRIM function, I first put the drive in a "dirty" state. I used Iometer to fill the entire drive and then ran a random write test for 30 minutes. This had little impact on the 840 PRO's read speed. However, its average writing speed dropped to a mere 77.5 MB/s.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - Dirty

To see how well the 850 PRO could recover, I let the computer sit for about 15 minutes and then reran the test. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the drive's average writing speed jumped back up to 418.0 MB/s.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - After Trim

Lastly, I used Samsung's SSD Magician software to perform a secure erase of the 850 PRO. With the drive wiped clean, it had average read and write speeds of 435.9 MB/s and 419.7 MB/s, respectively.


Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256GB - Secure Erase

Final Thoughts:

The Samsung 850 PRO is one of, if not the, best consumer-oriented SSDs currently available. Designed and built entirely in-house, this ultra-slim, high-capacity drive combines Samsung's triple-core MEX controller with their second generation, 32-layer 3D V-NAND flash to deliver some of the best all around performance we've seen. In our sequential read and write tests, the 256GB version of the 850 PRO was able to read at speeds as high as 564 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 493 MB/s. The drive also took the top spot in our random write tests, producing more than 86,000 IOPS at low queue depths.

The 850 PRO performed even better when Samsung's RAPID technology was enabled. The results varied a lot from one benchmark to another, but even on the low end the drive's sequential read and write speeds increased by 65 MB/s. RAPID mode also had a big impact on the drive's random write performance. When tested with Iometer, the 850 PRO's random write speed increased by more than 54 MB/s, giving it the ability to deliver more than 100,000 IOPS at low queue depths.

Impressive performance isn't the only thing the 850 PRO has to offer either. To keep your data safe, the drive features AES 256-bit full disk encryption and is compatible with both the TCG Opal and IEEE 1667 specifications. The 850 PRO also supports the SATA Device Sleep (DEVSLP) standard which extends the battery life of a device by reducing the drive's power consumption when it's not in use. Last, but not least, the 850 PRO is covered by a 10 year warranty.

The 850 PRO is available now in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities. Prices on Amazon.com and Pricegrabber currently range from $130 up to $700, with the 256GB version reviewed here going for about $200.

Highs:

  • Equipped with 3D V-NAND
  • Available in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities
  • Excellent sequential read and write speeds
  • Very good random read and write performance
  • Performs equally well with compressible and incompressible data
  • Good looking, ultra-slim design
  • SATA 6Gb/s interface
  • Large SDRAM cache
  • Supports TRIM, garbage collection and wear leveling
  • Features RAPID mode
  • AES 256-bit full disk encryption
  • TCG Opal and IEEE 1667 compliant
  • Includes SSD Magician software and Data Migration Tool
  • 10 year warranty

Lows:

  • RAPID mode is Windows only
  • Pricey