Samsung 970 Evo Plus Review
Last Updated on by Daniel Lawrence
The new Samsung 970 Evo Plus is an NVMe solid-state drive that we did not expect to see so soon – especially after the 970 Evo and 970 Pro were announced just last April.
Though it might seem like a minor update unworthy of a full-numbered sequel, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus is a worthy successor, offering the fastest speeds and some of the lowest prices on Samsung’s NVMe SSDs.
Samsung 970 Evo Plus: Features
Though it might not seem like the 970 Evo Plus is innovative enough to earn the name 980 Evo, it’s the first Samsung drive to feature a 96-layer V-NAND. Memory designed for higher speeds and higher stacking is the new form of memory.
On sequential writes, the 970 Evo Plus is designed to write at 3300MB/s – significantly faster than the 970 Evo’s top speed of 2,500MB/s, or even the 970 Pro’s top speed of 3,300MB/s on sequential writes. The sequential write speed remains at 3,500MB/s, but this is basically the fastest SSD on the market.
Samsung has become one of the few companies to speed up its SSDs by updating silicon, not just software, with this new 96-layer V-NAND.
According to the specifications of the 970 Evo Plus, it is faster than the WD Black SN750, which has sequential read and write speeds of 3,470MB/s and 3,000MB/s, respectively.
As it turns out, WD and Samsung offer the same five-year warranty with nearly the same total endurance in terms of terabytes written as seen above. WD Black SN750 is rated for 200TBW, whereas the 250GB 970 Evo Plus is rated for 150TBW.
Performance
With 96 layers of V-NAND, the Samsung 970 Evo Plus performs better than its predecessor as well as Samsung’s previous top performer, the 970 Pro. Moreover, it beats its main rival, the WD Black SN750, in a few areas.
In our sequential and random data transfer tests, the 970 Evo Plus excels in every category except our 10GB file transfer test.
Since the Samsung 970 Evo Plus is marketed as a value-oriented consumer SSD, we were extremely pleased with its performance – even outperforming the enterprise-oriented 970 Pro.
The only slightly disappointing aspect of this drive is that it couldn’t maintain its rated sequential write speed under load.
| Pros | Cons |
| 96-layer V-NAND and not just software drives faster speeds | Sequential write speeds slow under load |
| Lower prices across the board | |
| Class-leading performance |
Conclusions
NVMe SSDs keep getting faster and cheaper, so Samsung had to keep up with the trend – and it did, with its best drive yet. Samsung’s 970 Evo Plus has reclaimed the throne as the best SSD. It delivers great performance at a reasonable price.
Samsung’s new 96-layer V-NAND technology may be just the beginning of what Samsung can accomplish. The company could release a much faster 970 Pro Plus drive that incorporates the new PCIe 4.0 standard that will be supported by Ryzen 3rd Generation processors.
We’re just speculating here, of course. Samsung 970 Evo Plus is one of the best SSDs money can buy right now, which we believe is the most important thing you should know.
