Samsung 840 Pro 256GB SSD Review

Introduction

The top performance tier of any market is a fascinating place. Performance in just about any task provides a clear point of reference to judge a product. The very best products tend to cost more than those further down the list and because of that, the very best products are not the most consumed.

Determining what products is the fastest is just one way to measure SSDs. Price and performance tend to get most of our attention here at TweakTown, but other factors, such as reliability and availability do factor in when we write a review.

In 2012, three products stood out as delivering the highest performance possible for the SATA III interface. SuperSSpeed's S301 SLC SSD has dropped off that list for today's review because the architecture doesn't support capacity sizes over 128GB. The price would also be an issue if it did as well. OCZ's Vector and Samsung's 840 Pro on the other hand are left and both products scale to 512GB.

We've reviewed the OCZ Vector SSD in all three capacity sizes, the only review site that I know of to do so. Samsung has been a tough nut for us to crack and I'm sure there are a few reasons why. One that comes to mind is our reluctance to recommend Samsung's lower capacity products. We didn't like the 830 128GB nor the 840 Pro 128GB. Samsung's architecture produces strange latency results in the lower capacity sizes in some of our tests, and you can feel the latency under real-world use.

Just because Samsung doesn't seed us with their products, it doesn't mean we're not going to review them. That said, we acquired our own 840 Pro 256GB drive and shall beat it to a pulp today just like any other SSD. 840 Pro is a product most of our readers want to see because our readers tend to purchase higher end SSDs.