Samsung Series 840 Pro SSD Review

Samsung Series 840 Pro SSD Review

It was in this month when the 830 Series SSD (solid-state drive) from Samsung was released. Whether by coincidence or by tradition, the 840 Series Pro, also an SSD from the same manufacturer, was unveiled on September 24th.

The latest drive can be considered as a twice an upgrade because it is the professional version of the other 840 series and Samsung did not release a professional version for the 830 series. Its use of Samsung’s NAND, a high-performing toggle mode type of flash memory, makes it different from the other three SSDs. Series 840 Pro is now directly competing with Corsair Neutron GTX, another SSD that has a similar flash memory.

The drive is remarkably fast but it is not as fast as the previously released version therefore making it difficult to commensurate the performance with the selling price. The Series 840 Pro is 35% more expensive than the Series 830. In addition, it does not include any accessories particularly a drive-bay converter that you can use on your desktop. It may seem like the earlier-released drive would be a much better drive but you may also want to take into consideration the fact that the Series 840 Pro consumes less energy than the Series 830. Other solid-state drives may not even match to its power-saving performance.

The Series 840 Pro would still be a good investment for the systems used by ultimate gamers or professionals who are looking for top-of-the-line SSDs, especially if they are using a computer that is portable. Additionally, it only costs between $1.05 and $1.17 per gigabyte, which is not actually the most expensive SSD that you will find in the market. If you think your needs would be less-demanding, you can try the Series 830.

Design and Features

The Series 840 Pro is 7mm thick and 2.5 inches long and looks almost the same as the Series 830. It is compatible with the older versions of SATA but more than that, it is able to work on a SATA 3, which is the latest and has a standard of 6Gbps.

When you buy the drive, its packaging is new and appears to be more daunting than the previous drive’s packaging. But as mentioned earlier, it does not come with any of the essentials like the adapter for USB to SATA as well as the converter for the drive-bay where allows it to rest on a desktop computer’s typical drive which is 3.5 inches in size. The only other item that you will get with the package is Samsung’s Magician version 4.0. This is the software that can be used to test and modify the settings of the drive. Again, this seems to make the SSD cost more than the older Series 830.

While the Series 840 Pro and Series 830 have similar designs, both are internally different. As earlier mentioned, the storage of the Series 840 Pro is the NAND flash memory in toggle-mode. Another difference with the Series 830 is that it features the latest controller, 3-core MDX. The integration of Serie 840 Pro’s memory and controller, along with the firmware of Samsung, is the reason why it consumes less energy than Series 830, which is already an energy saver. To be more specific, Samsung claims that their latest SSD only needs 0.068 watts when it is being used, 0.042 watts when it is idle while Series 830 uses 0.24 watts and still consumes 0.14 watts when idle.

You cannot overprovision the drive out-of-the-box. To overprovision a drive is to make use a part of its storage space in order to enhance its performance. However, you can still use 7% up to 24% of the drive’s storage for overprovisioning. This makes Series 840 Pro a very flexible drive in terms of selecting between a maximum capacity or speed. You can also use the Magician 4.0 software to turn the overprovisioning feature on or off, check the health status of the SSD or erase data stored in it securely.

While the Series 840 Pro works well with Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, it is recommended that you use it with operating systems that works with the TRIM command to enhance its performance. Such operating systems include at the least, Mac OS 10.6 and Windows 7.

Price per Gigabyte

The SSD is not the most expensive drive in the market with an average cost of $1.10 per gigabyte. Although it is more expensive than the Series 830, which is $200, the latest SSD priced at $270 for a capacity of 256 GB, comes with the longest warranty for any SSD in the market, which is 5 years.

In terms of performance, the Series 840 Pro is one of the fastest among its 7mm counterparts but the Series 830 is faster than it.

Overall Performance

When tested with the overprovisioning feature off, it took 10 seconds to boot up the test machine that worked with the SSD and 5 seconds to shut it down. When the test computer was in sleep mode, it did not delay when resumed and all applications opened quickly. While it is really difficult to put the performance in numbers, you can easily notice its better performance than other SSDs around.

If you are changing from a hard drive to SSD, the difference can hardly be noticed but if it is an upgrade to the Series 840 Pro, you can immediately see the improvement.

Also, the SSD is recommended to those who previously had this type of drive in their computers. Compared to a different SSD, the use of the Series 840 Pro on a MacBook Pro increased the battery life by 25 minutes more.

In terms of copying a data, using the SSD as a secondary drive can give a good performance. The Series 840 Pro clocked at 257 Mbps when it was tested for copying data. While the test using it as the main drive for the operating system, and exposing it to reading and writing tasks at the same time, resulted in a remarkable performance with a time of 168 Mbps.

Overall, spending quite a bit for the Series 840 Pro is worth it. So far, its price is the only reason why you may not go for it. But with it fast performance and power-saving features, you may not need to look around.