Samsung 870 EVO 4TB Review

Conclusion

Testing drives is always a thorny issue. We hear a lot of people saying we should actually test the load times of games or something similar, because they are so limited by the OS or design of the game they’ll actually show that there isn’t much difference between a high end M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive and a regular SATA SSD. That’s a mentality we just don’t quite understand. We want consistent results so that we can, as best as possible, compare various drives and their performance. We don’t want to have to write two pages explaining that the latest patch for game 3 has dramatically lengthened load times. What use would that serve? Heck a recent Windows update broke Forza Horizon loading to the point that even on an M.2 it takes 4 minutes or so to get to the menu. We know that running synthetic benchmarks isn’t a real world test of drives but it is comfortably the most consistent and eliminates any other elements such as AGESA updates affecting our CPU speed, or game patches, or Windows updates. We’ve always been a website that wants to compare things as closely as possible using the most scientific method available, and that’s why we test the way we do.

As with all Samsung storage there is a huge amount to recommend on the 870 EVO. It regularly hit the limits of the SATA bandwidth, and performed well across all the different block sizes. If you prefer your measurements in IOPS rather than raw MB/s then you can see from the Anvil Read test that the 870 EVO is more capable than an awful lot of drives which, on paper at least, should be better, including a lot of NVMe offerings.

Speed isn’t the only measure of a drive though. We want reliability too and the Samsung 870 EVO 4TB has 2400TB TBW or 5 year warranty – whichever happens soonest. We can’t imagine a scenario in which you’ll fill the 870 EVO up completely six hundred times in 5 years. With the addition of Trim, S.M.A.R.T. and Garbage collection you can be secure in the knowledge that the 870 EVO won’t only be reliable throughout its lifespan but will also perform many months down the line at the same speed it does on day one.

What has left us grinning constantly throughout our time with the 870 EVO is the price tag. When we reviewed the 860 Pro 4TB a couple of years ago it cost just shy of £2000. Here, 24 months later, the price of the 870 EVO 4TB is beneath £400 at £395. We know that Moore’s Law is supposed to apply to things other than price, but you could get 20TB of the Samsung 870 today for the same price as 4TB of the 860 Pro cost at launch. If that doesn’t make you shake your head in amazement we don’t know what to say.

With a huge capacity, reliablity, fast transfer speeds and a jaw-droppingly low price the Samsung 870 EVO 4TB is the pinnacle of 2.5″ SSD drives on the market and wins our OC3D Enthusiast Award. There has never been a better time to consolidate your smaller drives into one big one.

  

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