Samsung 850 Evo 500GB

If you’re looking for a mid-range SSD with all the trimmings, the 850 Evo fits the bill, at a price that’s far from outrageous

If you’ve just read our review of the M.2 version of this drive, the SATA version holds no great surprises. Performance is unsurprisingly similar, and the price is pretty much the same. Like all Samsung drives, it supports hardware encryption (so long as this is enabled in your BIOS and/or operating system), and it also comes with a useful Data Migration tool, which walks you through the disk cloning process so you can easily transfer your system from an old hard disk.

One difference is the capacities available. While the M.2 range tops out at 500GB, SATA models are available in sizes up to a preposterous 4TB – if you’re willing to spend a cool £1,200. The pricing scales more or less linearly with capacity, with the 500GB model we tested coming in at £150. That’s not quite down there with the Crucial MX300, but it still doesn’t stick in the throat.

On paper, there may be little to choose between the Samsung 850 Evo’s twin incarnations, but we suspect that the SATA edition will have a broader appeal. After all, if you have an M.2 slot then you probably want to fill it with something that’s a bit more performant than the 850 Evo. However, if you don’t and are limited to SATA speeds, then this drive is as good as any other. It ticks all of the important boxes, and you won’t get significantly better performance from any of the other SATA disks.