Samsung 980 PRO SSDs Review – Finally Gen4

Summarized

Samsung has finally taken the step to PCIe Gen4 with its 980 PRO and that turns out to be a big step. The 980 PRO series is, especially in its larger capacities, the fastest regular NVMe drive you can currently buy. The 250GB version is a bit slower than the rest, but still quite fast. However, the price-per-gigabyte ratio is not great and so it is not recommended, regardless of the insufficient capacity. The 500GB version is more favorably priced, but the winner is the 1TB version. It is affordable per gigabyte and the fastest of the trio. All drives are a bit slower with small 4k files and Samsung is using tlc instead of mlc for its PRO series for the first time, making these drives slightly less endurance than the 970 PRO series.

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It took a while, and there are exceptions for ODM and business markets, but Samsung has finally released its first SSD with support for PCI Express 4.0 for consumers with the introduction of its 980 PRO series. The 980 PRO series is available in capacities of 250GB, 500GB and 1TB and will be available as a 2TB drive later this year. The cheapest drive costs around $ 100 at the time of writing, while the 1TB model comes in at $ 250 thanks to a more favorable price-per-gigabyte ratio.

At the announcement, many who were waiting for Samsung’s first Gen4 SSDs reacted somewhat disappointed. For the first time, the South Korean manufacturer is using tlc-nand in its PRO line, where previously it was mlc-nand. Admittedly, Samsung calls it nand ‘3bit mlc’, but of course that’s just a marketing name; we just call it by its tlc name.

We received the three capacities 980 PRO drives that Samsung is currently releasing and tested on our upgraded SSD testing platform how these latest solid-stated drives perform. Is the new PCIe Gen4 controller a big improvement or is it hindered by the use of tlc instead of mlc?

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