14 DAY TRIAL // Samsung created the 3D Vertical NAND technology for high-end solid state drives, but it was a no-brainer that the design technique would be adapted for less outrageous prices eventually. It just happened sooner rather than later.
We discovered some information about the Samsung 850 EVO SSDs earlier today, but the company has finally launched the product line.
Samsung has published not only the product page, but also a full press release and an introductory video which we embedded below for your convenience.
The information that hasn't yet been released, at least not in the press release, is the price of the new SSD range. Unfortunate, but at least we know everything else of import now.
The Samsung 850 EVO SSD series
The collection is composed of four storage devices, with capacities of 1TB, 500GB, 250GB and 120GB, respectively.
All of them are made from 3D Vertical NAND technology, 3D V-NAND for short, of the 3-bit variety. 2-bit-per-cell as it were, or TLC (three-level cell).
The storage devices are intended for small and medium enterprise servers, as opposed to the professional workstation-centric 850 Pro drives that came out in July and use MLC / 2-bit-per-cell NAND (multi-level cell).
Not that anyone will stop you if you want to buy them for your notebook or gaming PC. The performance might actually suit you, if the prices turn out to be reasonable.
The top read speed is of 540 MB/s, while the maximum writing speed is of 520 MB/s. Part of it is owed to the TurboWrite technology, although random 4K performance is what really benefits from that.
Speaking of which, the random 4K performance is of up to 90,000 IOPS writes (input/output operations per second), which is a lot higher than on many SSDs, consumer and business/server both.
Availability and pricing
Currently, all the SSDs have the 2.5-inch, 7mm form factor, but in 2015 Samsung intends to release mSATA and M.2 versions. As we said before, the prices weren't included in the press release. But previous reports and comparisons to other Samsung SSDs hint at the €102 / $125 to €439 / $539 range.
"We are thrilled to be providing users with an improved computing experience through the new 850 EVO SSDs," said Unsoo Kim, senior vice president of the Branded Product Marketing team at Samsung Electronics. "Samsung will continue to introduce V-NAND-based SSDs in a variety of form factors, while accelerating the growth of the global SSD market."
