Samsung offers most of the good things about
SSD, minus all the cost
If you're a regular Micro Mart reader, you
might be thinking that I've already covered this product a few weeks back, but you'd
be wrong. I did review the 840 Pro, but now Samsung has provided the more
accessible vanilla 840 for me to chew on. The confusion isn't helped by the
identical external appearance of the drive, which requires you to examine the
label to confirm the precise identity.
Samsung
840 SSD 250GB
For the same capacity in the Pro line,
you'll pay around $310, and with a 30% reduction in cost you can reasonably
expect less performance. Where you see that difference is in write speed, which
our testing revealed topped out at 260MB/s.
However, the read performance (really what
most people buy an SSD for) is almost as stunning as its bigger brother, and
well north of 500MB/s according to our tests. That's going to put some zip in
the stride of any computer, but especially a mobile system that's been slugged
with a cheap 5200RPM drive mechanism.
I
have no way to independently verify this, but Samsung claims to have put their
840 series drives through a torture test which wrote six petabytes of data to
the drive, and not had it fail yet.
Such performance isn't the only desirable
aspect of this unit, though.I attended a recent Samsung presentation where they
talked about SSD writing operations and the lifespan of these devices. I have
no way to independently verify this, but Samsung claims to have put their 840
series drives through a torture test which wrote six petabytes of data to the
drive, and not had it fail yet.
Statistically, assuming you write 40GB of
data per day, as per the JEDEC Workload SSD test, this drive should last at
least 11 years, and the life of the 500GB model is double that. Alternatively,
SYSMARK loading tries to emulate typical office usage, and using those drive
read/write patterns, Samsung projects an impressive lifespan of 37 years on
this unit.
What
I also really appreciate with this unit is the capacity, because 250GB is
enough for most laptops to function without having to track the usage avidly
Given that I'm hardly using anything that's
more than five years old on my system, I'd contest that the limitations of
Flash MLC modules aren't likely to be the reason I eventually take this
hardware out service..
What I also really appreciate with this
unit is the capacity, because 250GB is enough for most laptops to function
without having to track the usage avidly. My review version was a bare drive,
though Samsung also sells a Kit in which you get cables, a USB transfer cable,
a 3.5" drive mounting tray, an extra layer to put this 7mm drive in a
laptop made to accept the fatter 9.5mm mechanisms, and some software.
It is worth noting that Samsung Magician,
the software utility, can be downloaded for free and it's well worth having.
This one application contains a benchmark test, optimization routines and, most
useful of all, a handy migration tool. That last part is really useful, as it
can even adjust partition sizes in a transfer, and it's very easy to use.
This
version of the Samsung 840 is that much more affordable without offering
markedly poorer performance, at least on reading speed.
Overall, this version of the Samsung 840 is
that much more affordable without offering markedly poorer performance, at
least on reading speed. Because of that, and the excellent software that
Samsung now includes, this is a drive that's certainly worth adding to your
wish-list.
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Details
·
Price: $216 or $248 for Kit version
·
Manufacturer: Samsung
·
Website: www.samsung.com
·
Required Spec: SA TA III port and an SSD friendly OS
Specification
·
Capacity: 250 GB
·
Dimensions (L x W x H): 100mm x 69.85mm x 7mm
·
Interface: SA TA 6GB/s (compatible with SATA 3GB/s
·
and SA TA 1.5GB/s)
·
Form Factor: 2.5"
·
NAND Flash Memory: 2x nm Samsung Toggle DDR
·
2.0 NAND Flash Memory (400Mbps)
·
DRAM Cache Memory: 512MB
·
Support: 3 Year Manufacturer Warranty
·
Sequential Read Speed: Up to 540MB/s
·
Sequential Write Speed: Up to 250MB/s
·
4KB Random Read: 96000 IOPS
·
4KB Random Write: 62000 IOPS
·
Operating temperature: 0°C - 60°C
·
Non-operating temperature: -55°C - 95°C
·
Humidity: 5% to 95%, non-condensing
Ratings
·
Quality: 8/10
·
Value: 9/10
· Overall: 9/10
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