Samsung 970 PRO 1TB

NVMe excellence… at a price.

Samsung’s Pro series drives have long sat atop the throne at the top end of the consumer SSD market, a position that has come under some threat. Samsung aren’t going to cop that, which brings us to the latest and greatest, the 970 Pro. When you have a device with a performance pedigree like the Pro models have always had, our expectations are high.

NOT YOUR TYPICAL NAND M.2 DRIVE

The Samsung 970 Pro 1TB is a physically atypical NVMe M.2 2280-sized drive connected via a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface but… That’s about where the similarities end. While there are many high performance drives shipping with 64-Layer NAND, most of those use TLC memory, which is cheaper to produce and has a shorter life span. Samsung’s 64-Layer 2-bit MLC V-NAND is largely what separates the 970 Pro from the chasing pack. The endurance rating of the drive clearly illustrates this, as the 1TB 970 Pro is rated for 1200 terabytes written. Most other drives, other than the Kingston KC1000, are about half that. Of course there’s a five year warranty, but with an endurance rating of 1200TBW, the drive should last a lot longer than that.

The 970 Pro uses the company’s own Phoenix controller, also found in the top of the line you-can’t-afford-it range of enterprise Z-NAND SSDs. It has a nickel-plated heat spreader to aid thermal dissipation, and supports all of the features you’d expect on a high-end SSD, like TRIM, garbage collection, and S.M.A.R.T., as well as AES 256 bit encryption.

Support for the 970 series is included with latest version of the Samsung Magician software. There’s benchmark, secure erase, and monitoring tools included. Samsung also offers a data migration tool that can be downloaded from its website.

... there’s a five year warranty, but with an endurance rating of 1200TBW, the drive should last a lot longer...

THIS THING IS FAST

Performance is key when evaluating a Pro series Samsung drive. Sequential read and write performance is stunning as we expect, making this a natural choice for power users and professionals dealing with large file transfers. The random performance with low queue depths is also very good, though, surprisingly, the Intel 760p and Adata Gammix deliver amazing performance here as well. The Anvil Storage Utilities and AS-SSD benchmarks put the 970 Pro at the head of the pack. The In/ Out operations per second subtests are particularly amazing.

The Samsung 970 Pro is an excellent SSD, but it does come at a price. Yes, there’s the Intel Optane 900p, but the cost per gigabyte is much higher again, so there’s little comparison. What we have here is a class-leading 2-bit MLC NAND drive paired with a blazing fast enterprise-level controller that offers amazing performance, reliability, and endurance. If you want the best M.2 SSD you can get, this is it right here - but you will have to pay a premium for it. CHRIS SZEWCZYK