Best upgrade for money spent

Overall, this is a decent drive, certainly faster than any SATA based SSD where it matters. I am however a bit disappointed that the 250 GB version of this drive performs noticeably worse than the larger ones. "Coincidentally", there are very few reviews of the 250 GB version of this drive...

High apparent and burst performance

- Relatively high price; - Much slower than the larger versions; - Disappointing sustained performance

Samsung's EVO series has dominated the consumer SSD market for the past several years. The series has balanced performance and price, but NVMe is an industry-wide reset. Today we see if Samsung will dominate for another product generation. The Samsung 960 EVO is the mantle in the NVMe room.

Upper mainstream NVMe performance; Lower price than MLC NVMe SSDs; An eventual software package with new features; Future software package with new features; Better performance than the 250GB Model; An eventual software package with new features

Pricey; Low endurance; When will this ship; Power sucking driver; Limited initial release availability; Poor pricing against some MLC competitors; Low endurance and warranty; More expensive than MLC NVMe competitor; Low performance; Availability issues; Power sucking driver; Low endurance

I just received and installed yesterday on my 2016 ThinkPad X1 carbon, I also have installed the Samsung SSD driver. I felt it being very fast and I ran CrystalDiskMark, here is the result. It will take a long time to tell how reliable this drive is, but for now it is fast as advertised.

Easy installation and setup. Very fast and noticeably faster than a SATA SSD. Quick boot times and program startups.

Noticeably faster than a SATA SSD Easy installation

$/GB is still higher than a regular SSD

First and foremost, this drive is fast with near-advertised speeds (see story below for more details). The response time and consistency has been exceptional, and my cold boot time on Windows 10 after enabling several MSI boot optimizations is now 2 seconds flat. Still amazes me several weeks later.

Lightweight; fast; portable

gets hot quickly

We've only just looked at the flagship model in the new Samsung 960 range, the Pro, and found it to be gobsmackingly good.

The 960 Evo doesn't have the bells and whistles of Samsung's flagship 960 Pro, but it still has the pace to compete with the best drives around. If you're after stunning speed, but without putting a huge dent in your bank account, the 960 Evo is a supremely well-balanced alternative to the 960 Pro...

Solid performance throughout; Good small-file write speeds; Far more affordable than 960 Pro

Shorter warranty period than high-end Pro

This miniscule SSD comes in an M.2 form factor and uses NMVe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) technology - but don't let its size fool you, the Samsung 960 Evo packs a serious sequential read/write punch. Read on to see how the 960 Evo compares to SATA III-based SSDs and its brother, the 960 Pro.

The introduction of NVM Express has provided us with a worthy successor to the now aging SATA standard which traps users in a 550MB/s bottleneck. To some users SATA-based SSDs are still a valuable asset, but times are swiftly moving on.

+ Impressive performance; + Clean aesthetics; + Compact form factor; + Uses 3rd Gen V-NAND; + TRIM Support; + Dynamic Thermal Guard; + 3 Years Warranty