Samsung 870 EVO

A 2.5- inch SATA SSD for your PC upgrade

Photographers and creative professionals are most likely to upgrade a desktop with the latest components and extract the maximum out of the device before replacing it. And the most important reason for upgrade is usually the computer becoming sluggish and struggling to support the demands of the latest editing software. The main culprit is usually the mechanical hard drive. The solution is to migrate the OS and scratch disk to an SSD. A SATA SSD can be of immense help if you are planning to upgrade from an old hard drive. Let us have a look at Samsung’s latest offering, the 870 EVO.

Design & Build Quality

The Samsung 870 EVO SSD is enclosed in a sturdy metal casing unlike a few other 2.5-inch SSDs that have fragile plastic enclosures. Since this is originally designed to be used as an internal SSD, build quality does not really matter unless you are using it with a SATA to USB adaptor. This device got you covered even if you choose to do so.

Key Features

The 870 EVO is a 2.5-inch SSD with a SATA 6Gbps interface. It is backwards compatible with SATA II (3Gbps) and older interfaces. The device is compatible with laptop and desktop PCs as well as Network Attached Storage (NAS). The device uses V-NAND Triple high capacities. The 870 EVO series is available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB storage capacities. It uses

Samsung 1GB LPDDR4 SDRAM cache. Samsung claims a top read speed of 560MB per second and write speed of 530 MB per second and random read and write speeds of 98K and 88K Input/ output Operations Per Second.

The drive can be managed with Samsung Magician software. This software can be used to optimise, benchmark, and troubleshoot the drive. It also allows securely erase the drive. The drive also supports AES 256-bit Encryption (Class 0),TCG/Opal, IEEE1667. The company claims 1.5 million hours of reliability (mean time between failures). Samsung offers a Limited Warranty of 5 years or TBW (Terabytes Written) limit as per the capacity, whichever comes. The TBW limits applicable for warranty are 2400TBW (4TB), 1,200 (2TB), 600TBW (1TB), 300TBW (500GB) and 150TBW (250GB). The SSD measures 100 x 69.85 x 6.8 mm (W x H x D) and weighs 45 g.

Installation

As mentioned before, the Samsung 870 EVO is designed as a 2.5-inch internal

SSD. However, the package does not include mounting screws. You can, of course, use it as an external drive using a SATA to USB adapter. Note that the Samsung Magician software works only if you connect the device to a SATA interface.

Performance

We received the 250GB variant of Samsung 870 EVO. On SATA II interface (Max. 300MB per second), the device provided 248MB per second read and 223MB per second write speed. Connected via a USB 3.1 port with a SATA adaptor, we recorded a maximum of 438MB per second read and 407MB per second write speeds. We believe that connecting this device directly to a SATA III (Max. 600 MB per second) port in ideal conditions would provide the declared speeds of 560MB per second and 530MB per second.

Value for Money

The Samsung 870 EVO series carries MRP tags of Rs.3,599 (250GB), Rs.5,999 (500GB), Rs.10,999 (1TB), Rs.21,999 (2TB) and Rs.43,999 (4TB). We think this is good value for money.

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