Samsung 840 Pro 256GB review

Well over £200 for a 256GB SSD? Aren't SSD prices supposed to be going down, not up?

Samsung 840 250GB
Samsung 840 250GB

TechRadar Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Good performance

  • +

    TLC flash memory

  • +

    New controller and firmware

Cons

  • -

    Slight drop off in performance over time

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Yes, we know what you're thinking. Well over £200 for a 256GB SSD? Aren't SSD prices supposed to be going down, not up? Generally speaking, the answer would be a clear affirmative. But there's always space for something a little special at the top of the price lists.

The question Samsung's asking, therefore, is just how much are you willing to pay for the ultimate in SSD oomph.

Losing the magic

If that's the 840 Pro on paper, what's it like driving data round your desktop? Pretty darn good, on the whole.

There is a proviso attached to this drive though, and not of its own making. Our test sample had been round the block once before and Samsung didn't make its SSD Magician software tool available to help us do a factory reset. That explains why a few of the performance numbers are a tad disappointing.

We know, for instance, that it will do over 70MB/s in the AS SSD 4K random write test in box-fresh condition. The 59MB/s that it achieves in our benchmarks is still good - but it's just not as spectacular as it might have been.

Of course, box freshness is not a terribly realistic state. To reflect that, we also gave each drive an endurance test. For quite a few drives, the result was a pretty significant performance drop off. For the 840 Pro, what damage there was had already been done.

The only slight snag was that OCZ's Vertex 4 also ran the endurance test and managed to maintain its over 70MB/s speed. In objective terms, then, the new 840 Pro isn't quite the quickest drive you can buy.

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