Review – Samsung 840 And 840 Pro
The SSD market is one that has been interesting to watch over the last year. Gone are the days of setting up a RAID on multiple disk drives for the maximum performance. SSD’s have become fast and cheap enough that it doesn’t make sense to do otherwise. But of course, with such a large market, it’s hard to figure out which one is the best for you.
In September Samsung flew me out to their headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, and I was able to tour one of their SSD production facilities. While there I learned just how much effort the company is putting into the future of SSD’s. But how is that effort paying off for you, the consumer? Today we’re going to look at their latest two products to see how they perform. After all, that’s what really matters, right?
First Look
The Samsung 840 and 840 Pro look virtually identical. Save for the actual text printed on them, you wouldn’t be able to tell the two apart. They feature a sandblasted finish, rather than the hairline finish we saw on the 830. The same orange square is also present, but it has been moved to the middle of the drive, rather than off to the side.
As for packaging, the 840 will come in three flavors. You can pick up the bare drive, or choose a laptop or desktop kit. Buying one of the kits will cost you an extra $20, but will net you things like brackets and a cable, or spacers and a USB adapter. The Pro will only be available as a bare drive, however.
Looks aren’t everything when it comes to internal components. In fact, that’s probably the one thing that we care about the least. So here’s a quick look at the technical specs, and the performance we should expect out of the drives:
A big concern right off the bat is the sequential write speeds. I’m not going to get into that much right now, as we’ll discuss it in the next section.
You’ll notice that the 840 does only have a 3-year warranty, where the Pro features a 5-year. While a bit disappointing, this is nothing new, as it falls in line with what we saw on the 830. It’s also worth noting that you can find these drives for significantly less than the price Samsung set.
