Samsung 970 PRO

The Samsung 970 PRO is a reliability monster with a 1,200 TBW endurance rating that still beats most modern drives. Speed is middle of the pack by today's standards, but user sentiment is near the top of our charts. Worth the premium for professionals, overkill for everyone else.

You're looking at 3,500 MB/s sequential reads and 2,700 MB/s writes. That was top-tier for PCIe 3.0, and it's still plenty snappy for most tasks. Random performance hits 500K IOPS on both reads and writes, which lands it in the well above average range in our database. The real star is the 1,200 TBW endurance rating. That's the kind of number that makes this drive a favorite for workstation users who hammer their storage daily. The Phoenix controller and DRAM cache keep things consistent, and the Dynamic Thermal Guard does its job without drama.

Stacked against the Western Digital BLACK SN850X or the Kingston Fury Renegade, the 970 PRO looks slow on paper. Those Gen 4 drives will double the sequential numbers. But the Micron T710 and Seagate FireCuda 530R don't have the same track record for longevity. The 970 PRO is the boring choice that never lets you down. If you need raw throughput, go Gen 4. If you need a drive that will outlive your next three builds, this is it.

Value is a mixed bag. This drive isn't cheap. US listings run from $367 to $450, which is a pretty wide spread for the same product. If you're shopping, the lower end of that range is where it starts to make sense. You're paying for endurance and reliability, not raw speed. For a gamer or casual user, that's a tough sell when faster Gen 4 drives cost less. But for someone running databases or editing 4K footage daily, the peace of mind is worth the premium.

The Samsung 970 PRO is a bit of a legend at this point. It's a PCIe 3.0 drive in a PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 world, but it built its reputation on being absolutely bulletproof. This is the drive you buy when your data matters more than shaving a second off a load time.

It's not the fastest thing on the market anymore. Our database puts its speed right in the middle of the pack. But speed was never the whole story here. The 970 PRO pairs solid performance with endurance numbers that still embarrass most newer drives.

Skip this if you're a gamer or casual user. You're paying a premium for endurance you'll never use, and you can get faster Gen 4 drives for less money. If you need portable storage, look elsewhere entirely. This thing scored a 19 out of 100 for portability in our database, which is about as portable as a brick.

Buy this if you're a professional who needs storage that won't flinch. Video editors, database admins, anyone who writes terabytes of data a month. The endurance rating alone makes it a smart investment for data-critical work. Casual users and gamers should save their money and grab a cheaper Gen 4 drive instead.