SAMSUNG 980 PRO

A fast Gen4 drive, but with speedy and cheaper rivals there’s no justification for the premium being charged.

★★★☆☆ 1TB, $219 | samsung.com

It was one of the first PCI-E Gen4 drives and the fastest drive that you could buy for a while, but the Samsung 980 Pro no longer has that title. A shame, really, given that it’s still on sale for such a premium price. In fact, it’s the most expensive drive per gigabyte here, apart from the special edition Seagate FireCuda Beskar Ingot.

We’ve reviewed the 1TB version, although it’s also available in 250GB (too small to be of much use), 500GB and 2GB versions.

When it was first launched, the Samsung 980 Pro was one of the most powerful drives available. With its 1GB SDRAM cache and high quoted throughputs, this drive can’t be called slow. Indeed, it can still put a shift in, as shown in our benchmarks.

Managing 4,981MB/sec in the sequential read test and 3,940MB/sec in the sequential write test, the 980 Pro manages to outdo the brand-new WD Black SN770 drive. That’s also the case in the random test, where scores of 2,747MB/sec read and 2,944MB/sec write speeds put the 980 Pro fourth in the table. Given that this drive is a few years old now, that’s good going.

Turn to PC Mark 10’s real-world benchmarks, and the 980 Pro starts to lose its composure. Its System Disk score of 2,769 and Data Disk score of 3,630 puts this drive at a distinct disadvantage compared to its newer competition.

There’s full drive encryption built in, and the Samsung Magician software can be used to benchmark the drive. Neither is enough to make this drive worth choosing over rivals.

Rated at 600TBW for endurance, the 980 Pro is exactly what we’d expect from a drive: this figure shows that the SSD should more than outlast any PC in which you install it.

The simple fact, however, is that times have moved on, and the Samsung 980 Pro is still priced as if it were the fastest drive available. That’s not the case: there are much faster PCI-E Gen4 drives if you want the best performance, and much better-value drives if you want more storage for less cash.

"When it was first launched, the Samsung 980 Pro was one of the most powerful drives available."