Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD review
Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD review
OUR VERDICTSamsung managed to increase the performance over the 850 EVO, but at a price that most will simply pass on. The SATA interface limits what the company can do with this series and competition is closing in from both directions.
FORStrong Performance
Exceptional Software Package With DRAM Cache and Cloning
Class-Leading Endurance
Name Recognition and Reliability
AGAINST
Expensive
Lower Than Expected Native TLC Performance
The SATA Performance Ceiling
Editors LikedOutstanding endurance rating
Good overall performance
Samsung Magician software
Five-years warranty
Exceptional software package with DRAM cache and cloning
Editors Didn't LikeMixed workload performance lagged behind the 850 Series
TRIM-related performance issues
Samsung's EVO series is so popular in some countries that it outsells every other SSD by a two to one margin. Samsung wants to leverage that proven formula with the new EVO series so it can cling to its dominant and profitable leadership position. Samsung changes its pricing when competitors close in, and the company always releases a faster model when others get too close to matching its performance.
Many think Samsung's 800 Pro models are the best SATA SSDs money can buy. They work best with sustained workloads because 2-bit per cell (MLC) flash is more robust than TLC. But MLC is overkill for most consumer workloads, which tend to be short and bursty. Most people don't work in marathon sessions; we're more like dragsters that go a quarter mile at a time, and then we wander off. The EVO series is a good fit for consumer workloads because it often delivers higher burst speeds than the Pro series, but that high level of performance only lasts for a short time.
Historically, Samsung has played with the EVO's pricing to position its products slightly higher than the competition. The company's control of critical components through its internal supply chain gives it an advantage that goes beyond cost. The performance, warranty, and endurance specifications usually favor the EVO, but Samsung keeps the price close enough that most shoppers will spend a little more to get a superior product.
Samsung's V-NAND technology advantage has lessened now that nearly every fab is manufacturing quality 64-layer 3D NAND on a competitive node. Samsung has made advancements with fourth generation V-NAND, but the other companies have closed the gap. The hard limit of SATA interface is a factor, so it's more difficult to make the 860 EVO stand out from the competition based on performance alone. Samsung managed to pull out a few other impressive numbers with the new series, but the price is not one of them.
Nearly two years after its launch, the 860 EVO is still on sale and, if it's on sale, is a good alternative to the Crucial MX500, which remains on our list of best SSDs
The 860 EVO also has three different form factors. The full range of capacities ship in 2.5" while the M.2 2280 (SATA) scales up to 2TB and the mSATA model tops out at 1TB. Samsung and Mushkin are the only two SSD manufacturers to announce new mSATA SSDs in recent years. Most companies have shifted focus to M.2 SSDs and largely ignore the legacy mSATA interface.
On paper, the 860 EVO is only slightly different than the 850 series and the new 860 Pro, but most of the specifications are measured with high queue depth workloads that are more meaningful for professional products. Consumer workloads occur almost exclusively at low-queue depths. They also tend to have extended idle time between bursts of activity.
Samsung lists identical performance specifications for every 860 EVO capacity point. Sequential performance weighs in at 550/520 MB/s of read/write throughput while random performance tops out at 98,000/90,000 read/write IOPS. You'll need to push the drives very hard with intense multitasking to reach those heights.
Samsung's advantage over the rest of the market is its ability to deliver the highest performance at low queue depths. This started before 3D flash but escalated when the company rolled out V-NAND. More troubling to other SSD manufacturers, Samsung's continued momentum with each V-NAND revision makes it hard for competitors to pinpoint a performance target. V-NAND is now in its fourth generation, and Samsung raised the bar again for performance and endurance while further reducing power consumption.
Samsung outfitted the 860 series with a new MJX controller that supports low-power DDR4 memory, so it likely has a new integrated memory controller. We also suspect the company built the MJX controller on a smaller lithography that enables lower power consumption, cooler operation, and reduced manufacturing costs.
Samsung claims its fourth-generation 64-layer V-NAND is 30% more energy efficient than its 48-layer predecessor. Samsung accomplished the feat by reducing the input voltage from 3.3 volts to just 2.5 volts. It also reduced the program time to 500 microseconds, which is 1.5X faster than the previous generation.
We purchased our 860 EVO drives at Newegg, so they are the same as the models you can buy today. The 860 series supports hardware encryption with TCG Opal and Microsoft's eDrive.
The 860 Pro came to us with a note about improved Linux compatibility and NAS use, but the EVO was not specifically mentioned. Given the sensitivity of the data stored on a NAS, we would recommend letting the EVO mature before considering this a viable option for that use case.
The 860 EVO comes in 12 SKUs that cover three form factors and up to five capacities. We'll focus on the 2.5" models in this review, but we won't close the door on a future review of the M.2 or mSATA models.
We purchased the 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB drives. The 2TB and 4TB models appear intriguing, but that quickly dimmed when I pulled out my AMEX
The 860 EVO breaks new ground for endurance. If is wasn't for the new 860 Pro that provides twice the endurance rating, the 860 EVO would top the consumer SSD market with its 150TB of write endurance for every 250GB of usable capacity. The SSDs still carry a standard five-year warranty.
Software & Accessories
We were able to test the latest version of Samsung's Magician software now that the drives are actually on the market. The new 860 series and the 850 non-Pro/EVO from China are now supported. They also work with Rapid Mode, which is Samsung's DRAM cache algorithm that increases performance and reduces wear on the flash.
The software allows you to monitor and test the drive. In some instances, you can even delete all the data with the secure erase function from inside the operating system. But that's only if the stars align and you boot from a different drive. The list of criteria for that process to work keeps getting longer. You can also use Magician to build a bootable thumb drive to reach the same conclusion. Unfortunately, it just takes more steps and complicates the process.
Samsung also gives 860 owners access to a data migration tool you can use to clone the data from an existing drive to your new storage media.
Can you guess what Samsung's tagline is for the 860 EVO? "The SSD That Makes A Difference" is emblazoned on both the front and back of the package. The warranty on the retail package. Samsung doesn't mention performance, endurance, or any other metric you might use in a retail store to compare this product to the one next to it.
The 860 EVO looks like every other EVO that came after the 840 series. That was back when Samsung moved to a black case and retired the dark gray color scheme. The outside is basic, but Samsung doesn't need to RGBify the proven design or even change the methodology. The EVO series comes without gimmicks, and that formula works as long as the 860 can stay one step ahead.
It's been awhile since the SATA EVO series had a quality competitor with the real potential to displace the king of consumer storage. Three products that came during the end of the 850 EVO's reign stand out. The SanDisk Ultra 3D and Western Digital Blue 3D came to market in mid-2017 and closed the performance gap with SanDisk's BiCS flash. At the end of 2017, Crucial's MX500 became the first consumer SSD to move past the 850 EVO. It uses Micron's 64-layer 3D TLC.
High-capacity drives with optimized controllers and flash easily reach the limits of SATA during simple sequential read and write workloads.
We have to go beyond burst performance to find significant differences. Many of the new products with 64-layer NAND and more than a few die can saturate the SATA bus even when operating outside of the SLC buffer. As a result, there is very little variation in our new burst tests.
The 1TB 850 EVO can saturate the SATA bus, so it doesn't come as a surprise to see the new 860 EVO doing the same. Samsung's TurboWrite SLC cache is superior to most caching algorithms from other companies. In the screenshot above we see the result of a QD1 128KB write to the 1TB 860 EVO. This workload is the same as transferring a single file to the drive, except here we write one large file to the entire usable LBA range. The performance is consistent and free of any noticeable performance degradation as the workload transitions from the TurboWrite (SLC cache) to native TLC NAND.
Samsung is one of the few companies to list QD1 random read and write specifications. Samsung claims up to 10,000 4KB random read IOPS at QD1. Our new burst test shows us slightly less than 10,000 IOPS, but our older test produced 11,715 IOPS. In fairness, all of the SSDs score higher with the older test.
We begin to see the differences between the 860 and 850 EVO and the Crucial MX500, which currently offers the best overall SATA value. The MX500 delivers higher random read performance at low queue depths. This is one of the most important aspects of performance that relates directly to the user experience. Mixed random workloads also play a large role.
The 1TB 860 EVO dominates the 4KB random write chart at low queue depths. It's even slightly faster than the premium 860 Pro. The EVO's TurboWrite SLC cache is responsible for the extra performance. The biggest difference between the Samsung products and the rest of the drives comes at QD2 and QD4. The 850 and 860 scale efficiently while most of the others fail to ramp as quickly. The MX500 ramps up well to QD2 but starts to regress at QD4.
Samsung managed to increase its mixed workload performance by 60 MB/s at QD2. This doesn't seem like a significant leap, but this is a very difficult area to optimize over the SATA bus. The SATA interface can only issue read and write commands at any given time–the bus can't do both simultaneously. Switching between reading and writing involves optimizing for native command queuing and the brisk crossover from one activity to the next.
The 860 EVO trails the outgoing 850 EVO in mixed random performance. The drive also trails the MX500 at QD2, which matches the new 860 Pro with exactly 27,332 IOPS.
The EVO is the mainstream SATA SSD in Samsung's product line, so it wasn’t designed specifically for workstation use like the 850/860 Pro. We measure 11 workload mixtures but highlight the 70% read mixture as representative of workstation use and the 80% read mixture represents more consumer-focused workloads. The 960 EVO is much better than the 850 EVO. The 1TB MX500 provides identical performance during the read-centric section of the workload (on the left of the chart).
TurboWrite powers the 860 EVO to the highest steady-state random write performance we've measured on a consumer SSD. The new EVO even outperforms the 860 Pro by a small margin, but both have nearly identical consistency. We can recommend the 860 EVO for use in consumer RAID arrays.
The 860 EVO is not as dominant as the 850 EVO in common everyday workloads. The drive is very good and has its moments, but the new EVO falls in the middle of the charts during many of the individual tests.
Averaging the results and presenting them as a throughput score provides another good view of the slim difference between some of these products. The 860 EVO is only slightly faster than the Crucial MX500 1TB that sports a price break. That means the 860 EVO only offers a mere 2.647% increase in application throughput for a 21% price premium.
The desktop-focused recovery states provide five minutes of idle time between each test run. The 860 EVO recovers better than the 860 Pro as it eases out of a steady-state condition. The 860 drives are nearly identical and slightly faster than the 850 EVO, SanDisk Ultra 3D, and Western Digital Blue 3D.
The service time test results show a large gap between the 860 EVO and the MX500 1TB during the recovery stages.
The disk busy time test highlights how Samsung improved the EVO line in heavy workloads. The 860 EVO works for less time to finish the applications. The 850 EVO falls in line with the better products after some idle time, but the 860 EVO never gets out of shape. Samsung introduced the 850 EVO several years ago and it outperformed competing products in the degrade and steady-state tests. These results show how the rest of the industry has caught up and passed the 850 EVO in heavy workloads.
The 860 EVO beats the impressive 860 Pro. This is one of the reasons why we prefer the EVO family for consumer workloads. The drive will feel faster according to this responsiveness measurement.
The new 860 line should perform better in our notebook battery life test, but the results don't show that. We were surprised when we tested the 860 Pro, but now we feel the results are accurate after seeing the 860 EVO results. This is an area Samsung will have to address with firmware updates. For now, these are not great drives if you need long laptop battery life.
Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD review
Samsung 860 EVO Specifications
Form factor:
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2.5-inch
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Interface:
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SATA: 6 Gbps
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NAND:
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Samsung 3D V-NAND 3bit MLC
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Capacities:
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4TB, 2TB, 1TB, 500GB, 250GB
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Cache:
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4GB LPDDR4 (4TB)
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2GB LPDDR4 (2TB)
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1GB LPDDR4 (1TB)
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512MB LPDDR4 (250/500GB)
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Controller:
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Samsung MJX Controller
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Performance
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Seq.Read/Write Speed:
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Up to 550/520MB/s
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Ran.Read/Write Speed (QD32):
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Max. 98K IOPS / 90K IOPS
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Device Sleep:
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2.6 mW for 1TB (Up to 8mW for 4TB)
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Management SW:
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Magician Software for SSD management
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TBW (Endurance):
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4TB: 2,400 TBW
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2TB: 1,200 TBW
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1TB: 600 TBW
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500GB: 300 TBW
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250GB: 150 TBW
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Warranty:
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5 years or up to 2,400 TBW
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Design and Build
The new 860 EVO line is identical to previous EVO lines, that is, a black case and a light gray square displayed on the bottom middle under the Samsung logo. A sticker is placed on the back of the drive, which indicates information you might need including model number, serial number, and capacity
When opening up the drive, you will see the new Samsung’s new MJX controller, NAND pack, and DRAM on the small PCB.
Flipping the PCB over shows the other NAND pack.
Performance
Testbed
The test platform leveraged in these tests is a Dell PowerEdge R740xd server. We measure performance through a Dell H730P RAID card inside this server, although we set the card in HBA mode only to disable the impact of RAID card cache. The methodology used better reflects end-user workflow with the consistency, scalability and flexibility testing within virtualized server offers. A large focus is put on drive latency across the entire load range of the drive, not just at the smallest QD1 (Queue-Depth 1) levels. We do this because many of the common consumer benchmarks don't adequately capture end-user workload profiles.
SQL Server Performance
We use a lightweight virtualized SQL Server instance to appropriately represent what an application developer would use on a local workstation. The test is similar to what we run on storage arrays and enterprise drives, just scaled back to be a better approximation for behaviors employed by the end user. The workload employs the current draft of the Transaction Processing Performance Council’s Benchmark C (TPC-C), an online transaction processing benchmark that simulates the activities found in complex application environments.
The lightweight SQL Server VM is configured with three vDisks: 100GB volume for boot, a 350GB volume for the database and log files, and a 150GB volume used for the database backup we recover after each run. From a system resource perspective, we configure each VM with 16 vCPUs, 32GB of DRAM and leverage the LSI Logic SAS SCSI controller. This test uses SQL Server 2014 running on Windows Server 2012 R2 guest VMs, and is stressed by Dell's Benchmark Factory for Databases.
SQL Server Testing Configuration (per VM)
Windows Server 2012 R2
Storage Footprint: 600GB allocated, 500GB used
SQL Server 2014
Database Size: 1,500 scale
Virtual Client Load: 15,000
RAM Buffer: 24GB
Test Length: 3 hours
2.5 hours preconditioning
30 minutes sample period
When looking at SQL Server Output, the 1TB Samsung 860 EVO drive recorded 3,147 TPS, which was just behind the 850 PRO 1TB.
VDBench Workload Analysis
StorageReview has rolled out an updated assortment of tests for end-user SSDs, which are designed to look more at IOPS or throughput in relationship to latency. These benchmarks have been honed at a much larger scale for enterprise drives; for client SSDs, we decrease the loads to more common workload sizes. Testing is done within VMware ESXi 6.5 with a 20GB test footprint, comprised of two 10GB vdisks that are placed onto a datastore presented off the SSD under load. The test platform leveraged in these tests is a Dell PowerEdge R740xd server. We measure performance through a Dell H730P RAID card inside this server, although with the card set in HBA mode only to disable the impact of RAID card cache. The methodology used better reflects end-user workflow with the consistency, scalability and flexibility testing within virtualized server offers.
While not a perfect representation of actual workloads, synthetic tests do help to baseline storage devices with a repeatability factor that makes it easy to do apples-to-apples comparison between competing solutions. These workloads offer a range of different testing profiles of common transfer sizes. We've also included new VDI workload profiles. With local hypervisors installed such as VMware Fusion, Parallels or even ESXi, many end users are starting to see I/O workflows similar to a multi-tenant environment. This is especially true for heavy users that run several apps and browser tabs simultaneously.
All of these tests leverage the common VDBench workload generator, with a scripting engine to automate and capture results over a large compute testing cluster. This allows us to repeat the same workloads across a wide range of storage devices.
Profiles:
4K Random Read: 100% Read, 128 threads, 0-120% iorate
4K Random Write: 100% Write, 64 threads, 0-120% iorate
64K Sequential Read: 100% Read, 16 threads, 0-120% iorate
64K Sequential Write: 100% Write, 8 threads, 0-120% iorate
VDI Traces
Looking at 4k peak read performance, the 1TB 860 EVO performed with sub-millisecond latency until around 80,582 IOPS and peaked at just under 82,014 IOPS with a latency of 3.12ms. This places it in second spot with a near identical peak performance as the 860 PRO 512GB.
In peak 4k write performance, all SSDs (with the exception of the Samsung 850 EVO 1TB) virtually identical results. Here, the 1TB 860 EVO had sub-millisecond latency performance until approximately 63,143 IOPS while peaking at 64,268 IOPS with 1.98ms.
Moving to sequential 64K peak read, the 1TB 860 EVO had sub-millisecond latency performance up until around 6,016 IOPS or just over 376MB/s bandwidth. The drive peaked at 6,650 IOPS at 4.81ms latency and a peak bandwidth of 415.6MB/s. This placed the drive in last place among the comparables.
Moving on to sequential 64K peak write, the 1TB 860 EVO had identical results with Samsung 850 Pro 1TB. Here, it remained under 1ms until it hit about 6,200 IOPS or roughly around 382MB/s bandwidth, peaking at 6,705 IOPS and 2.40ms latency with a bandwidth of 419.1MB/s. Again, this performance was virtually the same as the 1TB 850 PRO.
Next, we look at VDI including Boot, Initial Login, and Monday Login. In our VDI Boot benchmark, the Samsung 1TB 860 EVO was top-performing SSD with a sub-millisecond latency performance until 30,551 IOPS while peaking at 30,740 IOPS with 2.11ms latency.
The Samsung 1TB 860 EVO continued its dominance with the VDI Initial Login benchmark. Here, we saw the new EVO with sub-millisecond performance until about 16,386 IOPS with the drive peaking at 20,669 IOPS and 2.63ms latency.
As you can see, results of VDI Monday login showed uneven performance. The new Samsung EVO SSD made it to approximately 16,819 IOPS with less than 1ms in latency while peaking at 18,693 IOPS with 1.71ms.
Conclusion
The EVO 860 is Samsung’s latest family of end-user consumer SATA SSDs, quoting a minor improvement in performance (550MB/s read and 520MB/s write) and better endurance while featuring a new controller and intelligent TurboWrite technology. The 860 EVO comes in the usual capacity range of 250GB to 4TB
As we mentioned above, the 500GB model was a performance slipup for Samsung, as the drive fell flat under performance-heavy workloads. This was certainly surprising, as new Samsung products usual set a new bar in end-user SSD performance for the past several years. The 1TB model thankfully didn’t have the same disappointing results as its lower-capacity. In our test/dev SQL server benchmark, the EVO boasted a much better 3,147 TPS and an average latency of 23.0ms. On our VDBench test, the 1TB EVO had improved performance in our 4k random read (sub-millisecond latency until 80,582 IOPS and peaking at just under 82,014 IOPS and 3.12ms) and 64k sequential read (sub-millisecond latency performance up until around 6,016 IOPS and peaking at 6,650 IOPS and 4.81ms) as well. The rest of the VDBench showed general solid results, with the exception of the VDI Monday login benchmark.
Like we stated in the 500GB review, storage companies are finally reaching the limitations of the SATA interface, so you will likely start seeing a performance plateau in the near future. This means that, while you will see capacity increases in Samsung's consumer drives, performance gains will be negligible.
BENCHMARKS
Samsung 860 Evo (2TB SATA)
CrystalDisk Mark (Sequential) Read: 562.7 MB/s; Write: 533.3 MB/s
CrystalDisk Mark (Random) Read: 339.4 MB/s; Write: 332.9 MB/s
10GB File Transfer: 14.58 seconds
10GB Folder Transfer: 26.91 seconds
Samsung 860 Evo (2TB M.2 SATA)
CrystalDisk Mark (Sequential) Read: 557.1 MB/s; Write: 515.9 MB/s
CrystalDisk Mark (Random) Read: 243.7 MB/s; Write: 236.3 MB/s
10GB File Transfer: 13.71 seconds
10GB Folder Transfer: 25.63 seconds
Samsung SSD 860 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD review
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