Samsung 830 SATA3 SSD 256GB Review

ATTO

The ATTO disk benchmark shows how quickly the 830 gets into its stride. You hardly have to increase the block size at all before it’s maxing the read and write speeds, and the read speed in particular just keeps getting quicker and quicker.

Conclusion

To a certain degree you could look at the Samsung 830 and think that it’s exceptional, just not quite as blistering as some of the Sandforce SSDs around. However pure performance doesn’t tell the whole story.

For a start it looks gorgeous. We can’t think of many SSDs we’d rather have at the heart of our systems than the Samsung 830. The attention to detail is exquisite from the packaging, to the outstanding Samsung Magician software, which covers every possible requirement you could have. The drive itself is robust and the all-black looks are sure to find favour with nearly everyone.

The consistency is great too. Only when handling really tiny blocks, 4K or below, does it lack a little bit of performance, but above that it really kicks into gear and rolls out some very high speeds indeed. It’s not all about gaudy numbers though. As much as the Sandforce controller is the fastest on the planet, it’s not the easiest and most stable controller to work with. The Samsung Y040 is far easier to live with on a daily basis and more robust.

Pricing is good too. Available for around £300 you’re getting a huge amount of performance in a gorgeous looking, well designed drive with customer support from one of the biggest names on the planet. Only its abilities with very small file sizes and some slight lack of absolute speed at the top end stop it from receiving our Gold Award, and for this reason we’re giving it our OC3D Silver Award. Although it’s only a shade away from getting Gold.

   

Thanks to Samsung for providing the 830 for review. Discuss in our forums.