We've seen many solid state drives over the past few years, some memorable and some forgettable. But it's rather rare to see new technologies emerge that push the boundaries of performance, features, and even pricing.

Extensive software package; Data Migration; Great stock performance; Otherworldly performance with RAPID Mode enabled

Price premium

The Samsung 850 Pro is the first Samsung SSD to use a new type of NAND flash: 3D V-NAND. Although it's a very complicated technology, 3D V-NAND is potentially very important for the future of SSDs.

Last year, Samsung were the first manufacturer to mass produce 24 layer V-NAND for use in enterprise solutions. Never wanting to rest on their laurels, Samsung have today unleashed an enhanced 32 layer 3D V-NAND equipped drive for the enthusiast market.

+ Very fast write speeds; + Great IOPs performance; + 10 year warranty

Samsung's new 850 Pro line of SSDs are easily the fastest on the market at the time of publishing. They offer all the newest features in one single package. Samsung's 3D V-NANA, RAPID Mode, and the huge 150TBW make this drive stand out from the crown.

Samsung recently introduced their 850 Pro SSDs, which are the first consumer-oriented SSDs based on 3D V-NAND. Do they allow Samsung to reclaim the performance crown?

When it comes to flash memory, Samsung is probably be the biggest innovator. While it's true that Crucial have repeatedly earned our praise (most recently for the featuring 16 nm MLC NAND with a memory density of 256 Gbits per Die), Samsung is known for more radical changes: last year, the Samsung...

Outstanding Performance; Support for Microsoft eDrive / TCG Opal; Very high write load specification; Ten-year warranty

It would be fair to say that the Samsung 840 Pro was one of the best SSDs we have tested. It offered class leading performance, good build quality, a decent software suite and a good warranty.

The 850 Pro is Samsung's new flagship consumer SSD, and the follow-up to the wildly popular 840 Pro, which was one of the best performing SSDs money could buy when it launched in September 2012. We're reviewing the 512GB model here which is priced at ￡232 (US$399, around AUD$420).

Let's first step back a few years, to when SSDs first started to appear. They were very expensive, low capacity affairs. Sequential speeds were faster than HDDs, but not by much. Access times were much faster than HDDs, and of course small file random performance also was, in general, much better...

Silky smooth operation as a system drive; Outstanding sequential reading and writing performance; even at very low queue depths; Outstanding 4K random writing performance; at low queue depths; Outstanding 4k random reading performance at very low; and very high queue depths; Sustainable writing...

Nothing to mention

Samsung does not cease to amaze me with their SSDs as the 850 Pro just kills it in every aspect. The performance is there. The endurance is the best of the class. Heck, even Samsung's feature and software suites beat the competition by a mile.