The Samsung SSD 850 120GB Review: A Little TLC for SATA
by Billy Tallis on November 27, 2017 12:00 PM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than our heaviest in-house tests, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The average data rate of the Samsung SSD 850 120GB on the Heavy test is slightly faster than the discontinued 850 EVO 120GB, but nowhere near the performance of the 850 PRO 128GB. The drives using Silicon Motion controllers and Micron 3D TLC offer less than half the speed of the 850 120GB.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores of the 850 120GB are very similar to the discontinued 850 EVO 120GB, but slightly faster. The 850 PRO 128GB and the larger 250GB 850 EVO are faster, and the 250GB EVO in particular shows less of a performance impact when the test is run on a full drive, but in all cases the Samsung drives offer lower latency than the Micron-based drives.
The average read and write latencies of the 850 120GB are slightly faster than the 850 EVO 120GB. The write latencies show more variation between drives than the read latencies, and the write latencies are much higher than the read latencies.
The 850 120GB has slightly worse 99th percentile read latency than the 850 EVO when the test is run on an empty drive, but better 99th percentile read latency when the drives are full. The situation is reversed for 99th percentile write latency, but both the SSD 850 and 850 EVO drives still have a lower latency than the 750 EVO.
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lilmoe - Monday, November 27, 2017 - link
Oh, and so are the Pros... hmmm.Is that a holiday discount or is it that I haven't checked the price in a while?
Arbie - Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - link
Great article, even though its subject is a minor league item. AT quality.bug77 - Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - link
That's the ugly face of SSD: the cheaper they make them, the more we lose durability and access speed...bcronce - Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - link
Still 1000x faster than a mechanical drive, perceptibly as fast as any other SSD for most situations, and will last a lifetime.mapesdhs - Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - link
Definitely will not last a lifetime, and some newer models can have worse steady state performance than a rust spinner.bcronce - Wednesday, November 29, 2017 - link
Even the infamous Samsung 840s were still out-performing 15k SAS drives in their degraded modes. I see free "crackerjack" USB 2.0 flash drives out performing my 7.2k RPM rust buckets.MamiyaOtaru - Thursday, November 30, 2017 - link
no you don'tyifu - Saturday, December 2, 2017 - link
power efficiency test pleaseyifu - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Billy , I would really want to see , is not only the speed , but the power efficiency for a older laptop like my MacBook Pro 13in 2012. if some one really care about speed , they will go for 850 pro 850 EVO, or PCIE. my gaming PC is with 960 pro for windows and 850 evo for storage. my iMac for work is with apple PCIE and a Toshiba HK4R 960GB (power lost protection). SATA speed for a ssd is done.the speed difference between those cheap SSDs are to small.I am thinking to "upgrade" my MacBook Pro mid 2012 from 840 pro to a slower but very very power efficient SSD.
finefunny - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
The company has already released several new versions of its OEM models, such as the PM871b, with 64-layer V-NAND. These drives often sell in basic systems from Dell, Lenovo, and other OEM brands. Customers often do not select the components in those systems, so the OEM models fly under the radar.Samsung isn't saying much for now, but it should answer our questions in early 2018. That's when we expect it to roll out new retail SSDs.