Samsung 860 EVO 250 GB SSD

Today I have a short review of a Samsung SSD. I probably won't have anything new to say, but maybe it will come in handy for someone.


Not long ago, JD had an SSD sale, and I also had a discount coupon, so I used it. The drive was actually bought for a friend. I was thinking of getting the 500 GB model for myself, but JD only accepts Qiwi payments from me, and there's a 5,000 RUB limit (or the equivalent in dollars at the current exchange rate). The 500 GB model cost just a little over 5,000 :(

It's a genuine drive, supplied in a small, neat cardboard box.


The package is very simple: a manual and the drive itself.


I only noticed later that a small slip of paper with a link to Samsung's Magician software had been tucked into the manual.
The manual is available in many languages, but I couldn't find a Russian version. Still, there's nothing complicated about installing or connecting the drive.


The case is metal and looks very much like my 850EVO.


There are two standard SATA connectors on the end: one for power and one for data.


The drive is about 7 mm thick, which is close to the minimum for 2.5-inch drives.


According to the label, the country of manufacture is Korea; the 850 EVO was marked as made in China.


Since the drive wasn't bought for me, I didn't take it apart, though I admit I really wanted to. Based on my experience taking apart the previous one, I even knew exactly where the screws were under the label.
In the end, I simply connected it to one of my test computers and moved on to the tests.


The drive is unpartitioned out of the box, so I had to open Disk Management and set it up. I actually did this several times during testing, since some tests required an unpartitioned drive.


Partitioned and formatted—it's ready to use. After formatting, the available capacity is 232 GB.


First up, an H2testw run. I already knew what the capacity result would be, of course, but I was more interested in the average read/write speeds across the entire drive. The results show 292/327 MB/s.


Information from SSD-Z. I also checked the built-in temperature sensor here. Chinese SSDs often can't display the temperature correctly, constantly showing 40 degrees. Of all the Chinese SSDs I've had, I've only had one (and still have it) that reports the temperature properly.


And of course, the benchmarks. First up is the one in SSD-Z.


CrystalDiskMark, two versions and two test file sizes.


AS SSD Benchmark, 10 GB test size.


Anvil's benchmark, 12 GB test size.


HD Tune—there will be more tests here.
First, a basic read speed test.


Write speed test, run on an unpartitioned drive.


These tests are more interesting to me: sequential write/read performance, and how speed varies with block size when reading and writing small files.
The test size is 64 GB. I initially ran it at 200 GB, but since the speed drop starts after about 12 GB, I reduced the test size to speed things up. The data pattern is random.


The same test, but with a zero-fill data pattern.


After that, I filled the drive a little over halfway and repeated the test. The size of the "fast write area" and the sequential speed stayed the same, but the small-block read/write speeds changed.


AIDA. Here, too, the write test is run on an unpartitioned drive. The program deletes all partitions from the drive, warning you about it three times first.
1. Sequential and random write test.
2. Sequential and random read test.


And now for some more familiar, easy-to-understand tests using Windows Explorer and regular files. In every test, files were copied from the computer's SSD to the Samsung under test.

1. A folder of video files and archives, almost 60 GB.
2. A virtual machine image of about 53 GB.
3. Almost immediately after the previous copy finished, I copied the files again to a different folder on the test drive. You can see that the speed dropped much sooner—the SSD hadn't had time to clear the "fast area" yet. If you run the test after at least half a minute to a minute, the result will look like the second test: 12 GB copied at full speed, with the rest at a lower speed.


That's it for the tests. I can say that this "test subject," as well as the one in my computer, which has been running for over two years, works great. The only downside is that the "fast area" is 12 GB, and sequential write speed then drops to about 300 MB/s—which is still very good. The vast majority of Chinese SSDs can drop to 50–150 MB/s in the same situation. And let's not forget that Samsung has the edge in reliability.

That's all from me. I hope you found the review useful.