Samsung 840 Pro SSD review: Samsung 840 Pro SSD

It's been exactly a year since Samsung released its 830 series solid-state drive (SSD) and today, the company unveiled the upgraded version, the Samsung 840 Pro.

8.0

Samsung 840 Pro SSD

$125 at Amazon

The Good

The <b>Samsung 840 Pro</b> offers fast performance and uses significantly less energy than other solid-state drives.

The Bad

The Samsung 840 Pro is comparatively expensive.

The Bottom Line

The Samsung 840 Pro lives up to its name: it's a top-notch solid-state drive for professionals with a price to match.

This new drive is actually the professional version of the 840 series, so in a way it's a double upgrade since the 830 series didn't have a Pro version. The new drive differentiates itself from the rest of its SSD siblings by using Samsung's high-performance toggle-mode NAND flash memory, making it the direct competitor to the recently reviewed Corsair Neutron GTX, which uses the same type of flash memory.

In my testing, the new Samsung 840 Pro was very fast, but it wasn't faster than the 830 series in certain tests, making it hard to justify the new drive's current cost, which is some 35 percent higher than its predecessor's. Plus the drive doesn't come with any accessories such as drive-bay converter for use with a desktop, which makes it much less of a good deal than the 830 series. In the 840 Pro's defense, it does indeed use much less power than the 830 series, or than other other SSDs I've seen for that matter.

That said, if you're a professional or a hard-core gamer looking for a top-notch SSD for your system, especially if it's a portable computer, the Samsung 840 Pro will still make a great investment. And it's not the most expensive SSD on the market, either, costing just between $1.05 to $1.17 per gigabyte. For others with less demanding needs, I still recommend the Samsung 830 Series.

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