Samsung 830 Series 256GB SSD review

Samsung makes many of the memory chips used in some of the world’s most popular smartphones and tablets, so it’s no wonder that the firm has used its manufacturing clout to produce a fantastic-value 256GB drive. It costs £219 for 256GB of space, which makes it a relatively affordable 85p per gigabyte.

Samsung has strayed from familiar territory to create its specification. The controller has been developed by Samsung itself, and is based on a triple-core ARM9 processor. It also uses 20nm Samsung-made NAND memory rather than the 25nm chips used by a majority of rivals.

That translates to good performance, although the Samsung can’t quite deliver the highest results of its fastest rivals, such as the Crucial M4 SSD 128GB and the Corsair Performance Series Pro. Indeed, its 346MB/s result in our large-file write test is quicker than a lot of SSDs we’ve tested. Its large-file read test score of 371.5MB/s is also good, but it isn’t outstanding.

The Samsung 830 Series wrote small files at 85MB/s, which is excellent. It’s one of the fastest speeds we’ve ever seen from a solid-state disk and is on a par with the Corsair Performance Series Pro. When reading small files, however, the Samsung faltered. Its 56MB/s score is slightly below average and is disappointing given its excellent performance in other areas.

Overall, though, it’s a good result, and its 85p per gigabyte price makes it slightly better value than the Ultimate-award-winning Corsair Performance Series Pro. If the Corsair’s a little too expensive for your tastes, this is an impressive alternative, and an impressive-looking one too.