Samsung 850 EVO mSATA and M.2 SSD Review

Test System & Comparison Drives

This is our new Z97 test bench and we thank ASUS again for their generosity in providing the Z97-A motherboard for us to use for our testing. All tests were performed on a fresh and up-to-date install of Windows 8.1 Pro x64 with no other applications running while using AHCI mode set through the BIOS. Synthetic Benchmarks were run with the OS loaded on a Seagate 600 240GB SSD. In between every test, the test drive was secure erased using an instance of Parted Magic. As such, all results should be indicative of optimal performance with the exception being the PCMark 8 consistency test. Power saving modes, sleep and hibernation are all disabled and all components were set to their default/optimized speeds in the BIOS (1304) and are listed below.

Z97 Test Bench

Comparison Drives And Other Models We Have Tested Since there are so many SSDs out there now with different controllers, we started a reference table of which controllers are used by each drive to help you compare results. Different controllers definitely perform differently and each has various strengths and weaknesses. Like CPU’s, even identical drives will have variations in performance and part of that variance may be attributable to the NAND flash used. Since the tests of the drives listed have spanned different test benches and represent different interfaces, we have listed the most recent ones for easy reference.

CrystalDiskInfo 6.2.1 Readout:

For the Samsung 850 EVO mSATA and M.2, the readout on CrystalDiskInfo shows that both NCQ and S.M.A.R.T. are enabled, as well as TRIM. This is a great free tool to see lots of detailed information about the drive such as the firmware version for the drives is EMT41B6Q. This is the latest available version for our sample drives but updates may be available after this is published.

It’s worth noting that Samsung does have a new version of their Magician software forthcoming but we weren’t able to get our hands on it prior to the release of the drives. It’s always been one of the better utilities on the market and expect no less with the new version.

Let’s have a look at the performance with some synthetic benchmarks followed up by some real world tests.