Model: Samsung 860 PRO 512GB 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.
Earlier this year, Samsung introduced its 860 series SSDs. In addition to their new mainstream drive, the 860 EVO, the company released its latest high-performance SATA SSD, the 860 PRO. Designed to meet the needs of creators, professionals, and gamers, the 860 PRO is powered by Samsung's new MJX controller and is available with up to 4TB of their latest 2-bit MLC V-NAND flash. This combination not only delivers industry-leading performance, it gives the drive an endurance rating that is up to 8x higher than its predecessor, the 850 PRO. The 860 PRO also supports AES 256-bit hardware-based encryption and is compliant with TCG Opal and IEEE 1667. To top it all off, it comes with Samsung's Magician software and can be used with their RAPID 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 860 PRO is available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. For this review, Samsung sent us the 512GB version of the drive, which is capable of delivering up to 560 MB/s sequential read and 530 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 100,000 random read and 90,000 random write IOPS.
Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the 860 PRO has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Samsung's new SATA SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the 860 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.
