Samsung Announces High-End 860 Pro and 860 Evo SSDs That Scale Up To 4TB

Confirming a leak that happened last week, Samsung has officially unveiled its 860 Pro and 860 Evo SSDs. In terms of performance, the high-end drives aren't quite as fast as the company's 960 Pro and 960 Evo NVMe solutions released in late 2016, but they both come in the more accessible 2.5-inch SSD form factor and are advertised to offer top-tier SATA III-based speeds.

In terms of performance, Samsung claims the 860 Pro is rated to reach read speeds of 560MB/s and write speeds of 530MB/s. In a practical sense, this is basically the limit of how fast SATA III-based SSDs will go. The more affordable 860 Evo is rated to reach slightly lower read and write speeds of 550MB/s and 520MB/s, respectively.

Both drives come in a variety of storage sizes. The 860 Pro will be available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB options. The 860 Evo will be available in 250GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes.

Samsung is able to deliver large amounts of solid-state storage through its V-NAND technology, which consists of layers of 3D NAND memory stacked on top of each other to reach higher densities. The drives also offer up to 4GB of LPDDR4 mobile DRAM and come with a new, faster MJX controller.

Samsung 860 Pro and 860 Evo Specs

Unlike the 860 Pro, the 860 Evo will also be available in mSATA and M.2 form factors in addition to the 2.5-inch standard. This will allow you to squeeze the drive into small form factors like ultra-thin notebooks.

The 860 Pro starts at $140 and the 860 Evo starts at $95. More pricing information can be found below:

860 PRO SATA

• 256GB - $139.99
• 512GB - $249.99
• 1TB - $479.99
• 2TB - $949.99
• 4TB - $1,899.99

860 EVO SATA

• 250GB - $94.99
• 500GB - $169.99
• 1TB - $329.99
• 2TB – 649.99