Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 250GB Solid State Drive

Model: Samsung SSD 850 EVO M.2 250GB 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.

Like many other manufacturers, Samsung has set its sights on the growing solid-state drive (SSD) market. Last fall, the company launched its first 3-bit 3D V-NAND based SSD, the 850 EVO. Optimized for everyday computing, the 850 EVO was powered by one of two different controllers. While the 1TB drive was equipped with the same MEX controller found in the 840 EVO and 850 PRO, lower capacity versions got Samsung's new MGX controller. To compensate for the slow write speeds typically associated with 3-bit (TLC) NAND, the 850 EVO used Samsung's TurboWrite write acceleration technology, which created a high-performance write buffer in the SSD. The result is an reasonably priced, consumer-oriented drive that delivers performance much like that of its higher-end sibling, the 850 PRO.

Samsung has now launched the 850 EVO M.2. Designed for Ultrabooks, ultra-thin computing devices and motherboards with built-in M.2 (NGFF) slots, this new addition to the 850 EVO family isn't much larger than a stick of chewing gum. The 850 EVO M.2 is powered by the same MGX controller found in the 850 EVO and is available with up to 500GB of Samsung's 3-bit 3D V-NAND flash memory. The drive also shares many of the same features as its full size counterpart. Along with Turbo Write, it supports Device Sleep (DEVSLP) for lower power consumption and self-encrypting drive (SED) technology that is TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 compliant. Moreover, the 850 EVO M.2 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 EVO M.2 is available in 120GB, 250GB and 500GB capacities. For this review, Samsung sent us the 250GB version of the drive which comes equipped with 512MB of on-board cache and is capable of delivering up to 540 MB/s sequential read and 520 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 95,000 random read and 89,000 random write IOPS.