Consistent Performance, Fairly Priced
Although eight months has passed since we reviewed the Samsung SSD 850 Evo series, not a lot has changed in the SSD industry. With SATA SSDs running out of bandwidth long before the 850 series, there has been little to no room for improvement except in pricing and capacity (which is also tied to pricing).
Big strides have been made in improving SSD performance with the introduction of NVMe, but to date few consumer grade SSDs support this new standard. There are also few native PCIe M.2 SSDs on the market, with the best example being Samsung's own SM951, though technically this is an OEM-only product.
Given what consumers were facing not that long ago, it's almost hard to believe we can purchase a 2TB SSD for just $800 today. That's still a lot to pay for 2TB of storage when the equivalent hard drive costs $50, though there is obviously no comparing the performance between an SSD and HDD.
It's true that buying a pair of 1TB 850 Evos is a cheaper way to reach 2TB of SSD storage, and is arguably a safer way of storing your data in the event of a drive failure, but the 2TB model is invaluable in situations where just a single 2.5" device is supported – inside an Intel NUC for example.
Of course, larger capacity drives are also appealing to those that just want to maximize their storage and aren't bothered by paying a small price premium to do so, and Samsung's 2TB 850 series now offers the largest capacity of any 2.5" SSD. For this reason, it has no real competition.
For now, Samsung's 850 Evo and Pro series have the SATA SSD market all stitched up. The 850 Evo 1TB was already an unbeatable value at ~$350 and we're happy to see that there's a minimal premium on Samsung's new 2TB models, particularly because it's the consumer's only choice right now. As of publishing, the 2TB 850 Evo is going for $750 on Newegg while the 2TB 850 Pro is $950.
score
Pros: Highest capacity consumer SSD available, performance is consistent with and often a tad faster than the 500GB 850 Evo, pricing is fair.
Cons: Fair doesn't mean inexpensive and if you're on a budget, two of Samsung's 1TB SSDs are a tad cheaper than one of the 2TB models.