Samsung 860 EVO 1TB SATA III 2.5"

The Samsung 860 EVO is a legendary SATA SSD that's still great for upgrading older systems. It maxes out the SATA interface at 550 MB/s and has rock-solid reliability with a 5-year warranty. Worth buying if you're stuck with SATA, but skip it if you have an M.2 slot.

The 860 EVO hits the SATA III ceiling at 550 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write. Random performance lands at 98K read IOPS and 90K write IOPS, which puts it right around the middle of the pack in our database. The 78GB TurboWrite buffer is a nice upgrade over the old 850 EVO, so sustained writes hold up better than you'd expect. But let's be real: any NVMe drive from the last few years will run circles around this thing. The speed percentile sits at 34th, which means most modern drives are faster. For a SATA drive though, it's about as good as the interface allows.

Against modern NVMe drives like the WD Black SN850X, Kingston FURY Renegade G5, or Crucial T500, the 860 EVO gets absolutely smoked on speed. Those drives hit 7,000+ MB/s while this one taps out at 550 MB/s. But here's the thing: if your system only has SATA ports, those NVMe drives won't even fit. The 860 EVO's real competition is other SATA drives, and in that space it's still near the top. The SN850X and T500 are better drives overall, but they're solving a different problem. If you need SATA, this is the one to beat.

Here's the awkward part. The 860 EVO is a SATA drive selling for USD 332 to USD 655 depending on where you look. That's a huge spread, and even the low end is steep for 1TB of SATA storage in 2024. You can get a solid NVMe drive for less. But if you're stuck with a SATA-only system, this is still one of the best options out there. The endurance and warranty help justify the cost, but shop around. That USD 332 listing is way more reasonable than the USD 655 one.

The Samsung 860 EVO is the old reliable of SATA SSDs. It's not going to blow anyone away with speed in 2024, but it's still one of the most trusted drives ever made. With a 4.8-star rating from over 76,000 reviews, people clearly love this thing.

It's a 2.5-inch SATA III drive with 1TB of TLC NAND, a DRAM cache, and Samsung's MJX controller. Sequential reads top out at 550 MB/s and writes at 520 MB/s. Those numbers were impressive when this drive launched. Today they're just okay, but for breathing life into an older laptop or desktop, it's still a fantastic choice.

If your system has an M.2 slot, skip this entirely. A budget NVMe drive will cost less and run circles around the 860 EVO. Also skip it if you need portable storage, the portable score is one of the worst we've seen. And if you're building a new PC in 2024, there's no reason to buy a SATA drive as your primary storage unless you're out of M.2 slots.

Buy this if you have an older laptop or desktop with a spinning hard drive and no M.2 slot. It'll feel like a brand new machine. The 860 EVO is reliable, consistent, and backed by a solid warranty. It's not the fastest drive on the market, not even close, but for SATA systems it's still one of the best choices you can make. If you have an M.2 slot available, skip this and get an NVMe drive instead.