Samsung 840 Pro SSD: More Speed, Less Power, And Toggle-Mode 2.0

By Andrew Ku
published

Samsung is taking the wraps off its new flagship 840 Pro SSD. It's promising better performance, lower power consumption, a five-year warranty, and aggressive pricing. Is such a compelling combination of benefits really possible in such a crowded market?

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption

Power Consumption: Idle

Fact: SSDs are so fast that they spend most of their time idle. During a recent virus scan benchmark we ran that lasted almost 30 minutes, the drive was only busy for 281 seconds. Consequently, idle SSD consumption is the most important power measurement to take in a desktop environment.

In our experience, the capacity of an SSD has almost no impact on its idle power consumption. And if past reviews taught us anything, it's that the same manufacturers tend to do well (or not) from one generation to the next, giving us a reason to get excited about the 840 Pro.

Samsung's 830 impressed us with its efficiency (high performance at low power). However, the 840 Pro takes things one step further. Not only does it best the competition, but it does so using the least amount of power at idle.

Power Consumption: PCMark

Power consumption during a workload is also a critical measurement, revealing a more complete picture of efficiency. It's impractical to log the energy use of an SSD over the hours it takes to run our Storage Bench v1.0. So, we're forced to rely on a shorter-duration run of PCMark 7. The results of this test mostly mirror what we saw in the first power chart, scaled up slightly. The difference this time is that capacity matters more. Larger models tend to consume slightly more power during use, though the outcome still largely lines up by brand.

Samsung impresses us yet again. The company's latest SSD consumes the least amount of power during idle and during use, all the while offering top-of-the-line performance. When it comes to power efficiency, Samsung's 840 Pro is the clear winner.

Andrew Ku
44 Comments Comment from the forums
  • mayankleoboy1
    Kudos to Samsung for getting ahead of the competition yet again. And the complete SSD is designed and manufactured in house! And thay are sure of its reliability, hence the 5 year warranty.

    I dont see why it did not get a Toms approved award.... its faster, uses less power, and offers better warranty than the competition. And the firmware is also stable, unlike SF.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    Where are the TRIM efficiency tests ?
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    Despite what the judges believe, Samsung is a great innovator. Unlike some fruity companies, that basically license other companies tech....
    Reply
  • willyroc
    Wow, Samsung was ahead of competitors with its 830 due to superior performance and low prices. Now I bet the 840 has, (or will) widened that lead.
    Reply
  • pocketdrummer
    mayankleoboy1Kudos to Samsung for getting ahead of the competition yet again. And the complete SSD is designed and manufactured in house! And thay are sure of its reliability, hence the 5 year warranty. I dont see why it did not get a Toms approved award.... its faster, uses less power, and offers better warranty than the competition. And the firmware is also stable, unlike SF.
    Probably because it still costs $600 for a pathetic 512gb of memory. Once you can get 512gb for under $200 and have a life span that gets close to a decent HDD, then you can expect an award.

    They keep increasing the speed, but they do nothing to reduce the COST. I would take an SSD half as fast as some that are out now if they cost me half as much and had a decent amount of storage. It's still pointless for someone like me who has over 1.5TB of space used. I can't load Windows and all of my critical programs on a 256GB SSD, and the 512GB wouldn't give me much wiggle room. Not to mention my sample libraries that would benefit from the speed... that are hundreds of GB each.
    Reply
  • So it's the Samsung 840Pro 256GB for C:, and it's the Seagate single-platter 1TB drive (ST1000DM003) for storage. Awesome awesome combo.
    Reply
  • sherlockwing
    Gah, 1 month after I get the 830 now comes the 840 Pro who gets another 120 mb/s in extra speed.
    Reply
  • mayankleoboy1
    sherlockwingGah, 1 month after I get the 830 now comes the 840 Pro who gets another 120 mb/s in extra speed.
    Thats technology growth for you :D
    Reply
  • aicom
    Well this makes my new SSD decision much easier.
    Reply
  • sherlockwing
    To those that complain about SSD life span, the truth is that in 3 years(typical warranty of an SSD) you won't be using the same SSD because the new SSD will be 40-50% faster. 3 year from now I'd be using the 860 Pro with anyway and when an SSD reach end life it just can't write anymore, you can still read all the files onto your new SSD unlike a hard drive that just breaks down.
    Reply