Back in October, we reported that Samsung was in the process of mass producing 3-bit 3D V-NAND flash, and at the time, we speculated that it would be the flash for the 850 EVO SSD seen at IFA. Today, Samsung confirmed as much with the launch of the 850 EVO SSD.
The most outstanding feature is that the 850 EVO uses the new 3-bit 3D V-NAND flash instead of the 2-bit 3D V-NAND used in the 850 Pro, which Samsung released earlier this year. According to Samsung, this makes the new SSD more suitable for notebooks and gaming PCs. The 3D V-NAND is important to the SSD because Samsung layers the NAND cells instead of shrinking each cell to create higher densities and cheaper memory, and with 3 bits per cell, you can expect higher data densities than previous SSDs.
The 850 EVO comes in 120 GB ($99.99), 250 GB ($149.99), 500 GB ($269.99), and 1 TB ($499.99) capacities. All models have a power consumption of 50 mWatts and are encrypted with AES 256-bit Encryption (Class 0), TCG/Opal, and IEEE1667 (Encrypted drive). The 850 EVO comes with a five-year warranty compared to the 850 Pro's ten-year warranty, and it's rated for up to two million hours reliability.
With the exception of the 1 TB model, which uses Samsung's MEX controller, the SSDs utilize the MGX controller. All models have sequential read/write speeds of 540 Mbps and 520 Mbps, respectively. Additionally, the 1 TB and 500 GB models have up to 98,000 IOPS random read speed and 90,000 IOPS random write speed. The 250 GB model has a random read speed of 97,000 IOPS, while the 120 GB model has a 94,000 IOPS random read speed. However, both the 250 GB and 120 GB models have random write speeds of 88,000 IOPS.
With Samsung putting its best foot forward in the SSD market, it doesn't look like the company is slowing its momentum any time soon. There are already plans to release the 850 EVO with more connectors, specifically mSATA and M.2.
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