I have 2 of the Samsung 850 EVO Series drives. The 500GB and the 250GB. I have them under use in both my laptop and desktop. The performance is fantastic, and I got both on sale for an overall excellent value.
They are very easy to install. If you are buying for a desktop or laptop make sure you get either a mounting bracket or spacer. Most laptops seem to need a spacer as the SSD's tend to be thinner in profile than a physical spinning disk. For my desktop I purchased the SABRENT 2.5 to 3.5 Inches Internal Hard Disk Drive Mounting Kit (BK-HDDH) and everything fit as expected, the kit included all the screws. For some the lack of a spacer or mounting bracket being included is a knock down in star, it didn't bother me so no deduction there.
The 250GB version was so good it sold me on getting a second one. I bought the 500GB for my desktop.
The 250GB boots my Toshiba Satellite S55t up in under 23 seconds from a cold start. At the end of that I am able to login and all the services have been deployed and are running at 100%. So that speed and performance sold me to get the 500GB for my desktop.
For the 500GB I installed that to my current desktop and it brought my start-up time down to 45 seconds. The reason for the disparity is in my desktop setup and not the drive itself. I am running 6 devices on my sata controller vs 1 on the laptop so it takes slightly longer to get the desktop up to full song.
Now how did it help me in my performance for what I do on my PC. My games load almost instantly, my Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator applications load in seconds now if not instantly and I am deploying them with 3400 fonts installed, that would typically drag performance down, but the SSD chews up that loading and spits out fast responses.
Pro's:
- Speed (Boots to Win7 64 Pro on my laptop in 23 seconds with no optimization, 45 seconds on my desktop fully optimized)
- Cost (I picked up the 500GB for $199, thats the best deal possible for the top performing drive in this category for size and speed)
- Easy to install, includes software for disk cloning or data transfer if you choose. I like the Samsung Magician overview software that tells you all you will need to know on how to manage and optimize your drive to get the most from it.
- Samsung tech support is great. I called them after purchasing the drive to ask about my Performance test numbers post full reload, see what I could do to better make use of the drives full capability. The technician was friendly and patient with me, didnt talk down to me and we talked back and forth for a few minutes. Definitely impressed with the support I received.
Con's:
- No mounting hardware or spacer for a laptop. If you look at Crucial MX series drives you will see they include a thin line spacer to help secure the drive in place by filling that difference of depth that occurs when shifting from a physical spinning platter drive (HDD) to a SSD. Samsung does not include a spacer, or mounting hardware. Again it didn't bother me as I planned to buy a bracket to mount it to my case anyway and already did my research and knew about the lack of mounting hardware. But for some this is a con. So be aware that you will need mounting hardware for a desktop application, and possibly a spacer for your laptop of choice.
I have had both the 850 EVO by Samsung and the Crucial MX100 series. If you can get one or the other at the same price get the Samsung, its faster, by only a little but it is the standard setter for its class in SSD technology. If the price goes back up to the $240 mark, then I suggest you look at the Crucial MX series. They are very close in performance and more cost friendly on average.
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Update 10/2/2015
In addition to my previous two 850 EVO drives. I have purchased two more 250GB for updates. I used one on my wife's WIN7 college notebook and the other on my mother-in-laws WIN8 desktop. Both run flawless as expected and increase performance and extend the life of the machines they are in. As the price continues to drop on these drives and SSD's in general as in IT technician I can not stress enough how important it is for you to make the leap from standard HDD to a SSD. You will never look back.
There is a newer model of this item:
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E500B/AM)
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$109.99
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My Experience Installing a new SSD in a 2010 MBP
I only review a product when I have something great to say about it. About myself; My day job is an assistant Mix Engineer in Burbank. I use Apple products 15 hours a day 5-6 days a week and have used macs since middle school. I understand that if you care for and maintain a great computer; like any vehicle will last you a long time. That being said my laptop (2010 MPB) with a 7200 rpm HDD was starting to show its age. I was contemplating a new MBP or pro and I figured I would try a 150 dollar upgrade vs. a 2800 spending spree. I couldn't be happier that i did!!I received this next day shipping for 4 dollars extra. My experience as follows;I unboxed it and at first realized just how lightweight these drives are... this SSD must weigh less than half of what a 2.5in. HDD weighs it would be replacing, yet still didn't feel any more fragile. Had a spare cable laying around from an old external drive SATA-USB and plugged in to format it...It wouldn't read the drive lol... starting to get worried I did what i figured to be the last best option, turning my computer off, pulling the old drive and sticking this unformatted one in... put the cover back on without the screws, inserted my usb mavericks install drive instructions found here:http://www.macworld.com/article/2056561/how-to-make-a-bootable-mavericks-install-drive.htmland turned on the machine holding down Command-R I believe and opened up disk utility. Erasing and reformatting the Samsung renaming it, using mac OS X Extended Journal, and GUID partition in options. It took about 5 seconds to do that.From there it was easy to install mavericks once that was done, I ran through the initial mac setup and it asked me if i wanted to use my old drive to transfer all my data basically cloning my old drive, i clicked this option and copying the 100gb took less than an hour with the same SATA-USB connector (same one that would not read the SSD). Once finished it was as if my MBP was brand new!!! it boots in 30 seconds. Runs incredibly quick, can process at Least 30% more data without the fans kicking on... iPhoto runs like a champ and in the background while online or other programs.... It NEVER did that before not even when new... (i've replaced HDD's a few times without any increase in performance) This Thing Kicks Major behind and doesn't break a sweat... the Kicker was when i started up Avid's cpu sucking beast of a program ProTools and ran sessions flawlessly in addition just to try it, I added more processing in the program than it could handle before and all without any problems not crashing the program (which is normal under heavy load) never imagined one simple upgrade could do so much... it will add at least 2 years to the lifespan of this machine and when I'm done with it, Ill give it to my parents and they'll get another 4-5 out of it just surfing the web, facebooking, youtubing etc..One thing to mention is because apple only supports the TRIM function on THEIR SSDs use a third party TRIM support application such as the great pay what you want; Chameleon SSD optimizer. its a great product please throw a few bucks there way! People deserve to be rewarded for the work they do to help others. You will definitely help your SSD last longer with it!That being said overall; It took 2 hours total to install this, help my gf decorate the christmas tree, and eat chicken noodle soup. So I give this product a 5 star review and would probably give it more stars if they'd let me. I hope this review helps you get up and running with your new SSD!Happy Holidays!!
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The price to GB ratio is high even now but its totally worth it. I've been using Lenovo Y50-70 since I bought it on Dec/2014 and has never been fully formatted (upgraded to Windows 10 from 8.1). By July/2016 my laptop was slow as hell, 5 min to boot up, 10 min to restart,5+min to fully shut down, programs would constantly freeze, games would take 5-8 min to load.
Bought this and did a fresh install of Windows 10. I did a restart to test the speeds, in ~15 seconds i was on the desktop ready for work. Its insanely fast !. Booting up takes ~10 secs (Watch my video) ! I am an animator , so i use heavy programs like Maya, Photoshop, Premiere , After Effects etc . Maya used to take 2-4 min to load, now it does in 10 secs. I game a lot too, Battlefield 3 used to take minutes to load a map in online match and now it doesn't even show "Loading level" anymore most of the time. Any system that costs more than Rs.60k deserves an SSD.
Tips: Using an SSD is noting like using an HDD , you need you manually optimize Windows to make sure the SSD doesn't wear out with too many unnecessary writes. There are a lot of guides online that helps you to disable features like hibernate, search indexing , superfetch/prefetch, Reduce or disable virtual ram etc. Most of these features are designed to speed up the PC because of the slow nature of HDDs but they are completely obsolete when using an SSD and may even reduce the life and efficiency of SSDs.
SUPER TIP: NEVER DEFRAGMENT AN SSD , THIS IS ONLY FOR HDDs.
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