Model: Samsung SSD 840 Series 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. This past fall, the company introduced two new drives, the SSD 840 and SSD 840 Pro. Designed and built completely in-house, these two ultra-slim SSDs are powered by Samsung's own triple-core MDX controller and feature a SATA 6GB/s interface, specially-engineered wear-leveling and garbage collection algorithms and up to 512MB of cache. The main difference between the two is the type of NAND flash used. The SSD 840 is the first SSD on the market to use Samsung's new TLC (triple-level cell) NAND flash. While this high-density NAND is more affordable than the Toggle Mode MLC NAND found in the SSD 840 Pro, there is a bit of a trade off in regards to endurance (program/erase cycles) and performance. Nevertheless, the SSD 840 is still able to deliver up to 540MB/s read and 330MB/s write speeds as well as a maximum of 70,000 4KB random write IOPS.

For this review, Samsung sent us the 250GB version of the SSD 840. This drive comes equipped with 512MB of on-board cache and is capable of delivering up to 540MB/s sequential read and 250MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 96,000 random read and 62,000 random write IOPS.

   Samsung SSD 840 Series 250GB Solid State Drive
General Specifications
Model Number MZ-7TD250BW
Capacity 250GB
Flash Type 21nm Toggle Mode TLC NAND
Controller Samsung S4LN021X01-8030
Cache 512MB LPDDR2 SDRAM
Form Factor 2.5-inch
Interface SATA III 6Gb/s

Performance
Sequential Read 540 MB/s Max
Sequential Write 250 MB/s Max
Random Read (IOPS 4K) 96,000 Max
Random Write (IOPS 4K) 62,000 Max

Reliability
MTBF 1.5 million hours

Power Consumption
Active 0.071W
Idle 0.046W

Environmental
Temperature (Operating) 32 ºF to 140 ºF
Shock 1500G/0.5 ms
Vibration (Operating) 2.17G rms (7~800Hz)
Vibration (Non-operating) 3.08G rms (7~800Hz)
Humidity 5% to 95%, non-condensing

Dimensions and Weight
Dimensions 100 x 69.85 x 7 mm
Weight 53.5g

Other Features
Ultra-slim 7mm form factor
Wear-Leveling and Garbage Collection Algorithms
Supports TRIM, SMART and NCQ
Includes SSD Magician software and Data Migration Tool
AES 256-bit full disk encryption
Three year warranty

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the SSD 840 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Samsung's new SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the SSD 840 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.


Prev Next >>