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Samsung has announced imminent inflow of the 850 Evo SSD — the first mainstream SSD that uses 3D NAND. Thanks to its fancy 3D NAND tech, the 850 Evo is one of the fastest SSDs on the market — and the longevity and reliability of 3D NAND TLC flash cells is then much improve than standard planar NAND flash that Samsung offers the 850 Evo with a five-year warranty. There is one problem with the 850 Evo, all the same: It isn't priced quite right for a mainstream bulldoze.

As y'all may already know, the Samsung 850 Pro — peculiarly with RAPID RAM caching enabled — is by far the all-time SSD money tin can buy. The 850 Pro's combination of operation and immovability (a 10-twelvemonth warranty!) hateful that nothing else really comes close. The one caveat, of grade, is cost — the 1TB 850 Pro will set you back around $650, while y'all tin can option up a decent 1TB SanDisk Ultra Two or Crucial M550 for about $450. The higher toll is due to Samsung'due south use of 3D NAND — a new brood of wink memory that, and so far at least, isn't produced by anyone else.

The purpose of the 850 Evo, and so, is to bring 3D NAND (sometimes known as vertical NAND or 5-NAND) to a lower, value/mainstream cost point — but it doesn't quite get there. The 850 Evo hasn't even so hit retailers, but the 1TB drive has an MSRP of $500 — or about x% college than what other mainstream 1TB drives are currently going for on Newegg; the 512GB drive, at $270 MSRP, is nearly 15% over other mainstream drives.

Samsung 850 Evo benchmark

Samsung 850 Evo benchmark [Epitome credit: Anandtech]

For those extra dollars, you get a drive that's around 10-xx% faster than the cheaper SanDisk or Crucial SSD, and much higher immovability. Co-ordinate to Samsung, the use of 3D NAND gives the 850 Evo a massive 2,000 program/erase (P/E) cycles per prison cell — which, unless you like to torture your SSDs in vicious and unusual ways, will give you a drive life expectancy that's well across the 5-year warranty. For light'ish workloads, yous could even see decades of life out of an 850 Evo. Don't forget, this is TLC 3D NAND we're talking about, besides; non the larger, more expensive, even-more-reliable 2-chip MLC 3D NAND that Samsung used in the 850 Pro.

Read: SSD shadiness: Kingston and PNY caught bait-and-switching cheaper components after good reviews

All in all, then, the 850 Evo looks like a very stiff drive — simply the slightly-higher up-mainstream pricing puts information technology in odd position. On the one hand, early on benchmarks point to the 850 Evo existence the best consumer-grade drive that money can buy (except for the 850 Pro). On the other hand, most consumers will be more than happy with a cheaper SSD. The truth is, nigh modern SSDs are pretty good — a 10 or 20% departure in performance, when you're talking almost throughput in the 300-400MB/sec range, is really non that significant. Maybe when software catches upwards with the massive performance provided by SSDs, then information technology'll be worth spending a little more — but for at present, only ability users volition likely notice much of a difference.

NAND flash silicon die

NAND flash bit – such cute regularity

The other choice, of class, is that 850 Pro might actually terminate upward being sold at the aforementioned toll as the SanDisk Ultra II and Crucial M550 — right at present we only accept the MSRPs; the actual sale cost could be lower. If y'all can actually get a 1TB 850 Evo SSD for about $430, then at that place'll be very little reason to buy any other drive.

There's no word on when the 850 Evo will actually keep sale, but it should exist soon. The MSRPs are: $100 for 128GB, $150 for 256GB, $270 for 512GB, and $500 for 1TB. All drives accept a five-yr warranty, with the 1TB and 512GB drives beingness the best options, functioning-wise. The 3 smaller models of the 850 Evo have a new Samsung MGX controller, while the 1TB model has the MEX controller from the 840 Evo and 850 Pro.

Now read: The all-time SSDs of 2014: A buyers guide