Samsung refreshes SATA solid state drive line with 860 Pro and 860 Evo SSDs

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Still showing love for SATA.

In case you thought Samsung might abandon the 2.5-inch form factor and stop churning out new SATA-based solid state drives, no worries, that isn't happening. Samsung today unveiled not one, but two new SATA SSD families, the 860 Pro and 860 Evo.

We already have a review of the 860 Evo posted, as Samsung sent us a couple models to test, a 500GB drive and a massive 4TB model. Unfortunately Samsung didn't include an 860 Pro drives for us to evaluate, so that will have to wait.

The main difference between the two lines is the type of memory—the 860 Evo uses TLC memory chips and the 860 Pro uses MLC memory, both of which are of the 64-bit layer 3D V-NAND variety. They also feature a new memory controller.

You would expect the 860 Pro to be faster than the 860 Evo, and that's the case, at least on paper. Samsung rates the sequential read performance of the 860 Pro at up to 560MB/s and sequential writes at up to 530MB/s, versus 550MB/s reads and 520MB/s writes on the 860 Evo.

The 860 Pro also offers faster random reads, with Samsung claiming up to 100,000 IOPS versus 98,000 IOPS. Random writes are the same, with the both the 860 Pro and 860 Evo rated at 90,000 IOPS.

Samsung is offering both drive lines in up to 4TB capacity. Other capacity options include 2TB, 1TB, 512GB, and 256GB for the 860 Pro with prices starting at $95, and 2TB, 1TB, 500GB, and 250GB for the 860 Evo with prices starting at $140.

Both drive lines carry a 5-year warranty, or up to 2,400 TBW (terabytes written) for the 860 Evo and 4,800 TBW for the 860 Pro.

Of course, the real question is whether Tuan will stick 10 of the 4TB Samsung 860 Pro SSDs in his NAS box to see what performance looks like compared to 10 hard drives.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).