Samsung 860 PRO SSD Review – 2TB Drive Tested

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The Samsung 850 PPR and 850 EVO were the first consumer Solid State Drives (SSDs) with V-NAND technology and went on to be some of the best selling SATA III SSDs drives. Samsung believes that the new 860 PRO and 860 EVO will be even better due to improvements in speed, reliability, compatibility and increased capacities. Samsung made these advances by switching over to the latest 512 Gb and 256 Gb 64-layer V-NAND Flash memory, utilizing up to 4GB of LPDDR4 DRAM and using the new MJX controller. Our testing shows that the 860 PRO 2TB that we have tested today, is one of the best SATA III SSDs that we have ever tested. We topped drives rated 560 MB/s sequential read and 530 MB/s sequential write speeds and came close to matching the drives 100k 4K Random IOPS performance target. This is certainly a refined SATA III drive in a market that has felt done for a number of years since SATA III has a theoretical bandwidth limitation of 600 MB/s and we’ve been hitting that performance wall for years.

When it comes to reliability, Samsung drives are widely regarded as the best around and they are doubling down with the 860 PRO series. Samsung has roughly 8x increased the Total Bytes Written (TBW) on the 860 PRO over the 850 PRO! They top that off with a 5-year limited warranty, so you have some good peace of mind here. We should point out that the Samsung SSD 850 PRO series has a longer 10-year limited warranty, but lower TBW ratings. The argument between having a longer warranty length in years versus a higher TBW rating has been going on for some time and it looks like Samsung is trying to focus on a better TBW rating this time around.

The 860 PRO 2TB model that we looked at today has a 2400TBW rating, so over a course of 5-years (1,825 days) you could write just over 1.3 TB of data to the drive per day! If you have a heavy daily workload that you need to run on a consumer level SSD the 860 PRO series specifications should give you confidence that you’ll get many years of reliable service. That Samsung 2bit MLC 64-layer V-NAND looks like it is some good stuff!

Samsung SSD 860 PRO SATA Pricing

• 256GB – $139.99 ($0.55 per GB)
• 512GB – $249.99 ($0.49 per GB)
• 1TB – $479.99 ($0.48 per GB)
• 2TB – $949.99 ($0.47 per GB)
• 4TB – $1,899.99 ($0.47 per GB)

When it comes to pricing the Samsung 860 PRO 2TB model that we looked at today is $949.99 or about $0.47 per GB. For those that want more storage space there is the 860 PRO 4TB model, but you’ll need to cough up $1,899.99 or $0.47 per GB for that model as well. The 4TB model is price well over what most will pay for an SSD, but if you need tons of storage space on a PC, laptop, workstation or NAS you might be in need of something like that. Samsung says the 860 PRO 4TB will hold 114 hours and 30 minutes of 4K Ultra HD video. At $1,900 you are looking at $16.59 per hour of video footage. Doesn’t sound that bad when you do the math like that!

The Samsung SSD 860 PRO series is easily recommended and is our top choice for a SATA SSD for those looking for the best money can buy.

Legit Bottom Line: Samsung raises the bar yet again for what one can expect from SATA SSDs with the 860 PRO series!