The 256GB Samsung 850 Pro is the fastest consumer SSD we have seen to date. Thanks to Samsung's new 3D V-NAND the 850 Pro has lower power consumption and better performance, albeit marginally, than both the 840 Evo and 840 Pro. Looking at the benchmark figures for the 840 and 850 Pros shows that the effective performance improvement is 10% whereas the 850 Pro beats the 840 Evo by 16%. These drives effectively saturate SATA 3.0 making it difficult to distinguish between them in day-to-day use. At current prices the 850 Pro is prohibitively expensive, prices need to drop by 15% before it approaches the 840 Pro from a value perspective. Samsung may release a value orientated 850 Evo soon, but for now "most" users are better off with the 840 Pro. [Oct '14SSDrivePro]
The Mushkin Reactor features the same Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller found on both the Crucial BX100 and the Transcend SSD370. All three drives also feature Micron MLC NAND and consequently they all share a similar (and strong) performance profile. These drives were the last batch (early 2015) of budget drives to utilize MLC rather than TLC NAND and as a result they all have reasonably strong sustained write speeds. The more recent trend for budget drives is to utilize a small SLC write cache coupled with TLC NAND, a combination which results in severe write speed degradation upon cache exhaustion. The Mushkin Reactor doesn’t have this problem and both the 500GB and 1TB Reactors only lag the market leading 850 Evo slightly on performance. At today’s prices the 1TB Reactor offers better value for money than the market leading Samsung 850 Evo (compare them). See the current market leaders here. [May '16SSDrivePro]
Welcome to our SSD comparison. We calculate effective speed for both SATA and NVMe drives based on real world performance then adjust by current prices per GB to yield a value for money rating. Our calculated values are checked against thousands of individual user ratings. The customizable table below combines these factors to bring you the definitive list of top SSDs. [SSDrivePro]
Welcome to our PC speed test tool. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. You can quickly size up your PC, identify hardware problems and explore the best value for money upgrades.