Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SATA III 2.5"

The 850 EVO is a time machine for old PCs, not a speed demon. Grab it cheap for a SATA upgrade, skip it entirely if you have M.2.

The sequential numbers are exactly what Samsung promised back in the day, 540 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 feature set is where this drive shines, 94th percentile, thanks to hardware encryption and that 5-year warranty. But the speed percentile is 31st, and capacity is 27th. That's the honest trade-off. This drive is not trying to win drag races. It's trying to make a 2012 Dell feel alive again, and it does that shockingly well.

Stack this against the Crucial T500, MSI SPATIUM M480 PRO, or XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade and the 850 EVO looks like it showed up to a rocket launch with a bicycle. Those are all NVMe drives with PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 speeds, meaning they'll do 5,000 to 10,000 MB/s while the 850 EVO is stuck at 540. But here's the catch: if your motherboard only has SATA ports, those fancy NVMe drives are useless to you. The 850 EVO isn't competing with them on speed. It's competing on compatibility and price. For an older system, this Samsung is the smarter buy. For a new build, don't even consider it.

Value: this drive costs anywhere from USD 120 to USD 249 depending on where you look. At the low end, it's a no-brainer for breathing life into an old machine. At the high end, you're getting fleeced. Newegg has listings at the lower end of that spread, so shop there first. If you're paying over USD 150 for a 500GB SATA drive in 2025, stop. You can get a decent 1TB NVMe for that money, assuming your system supports it. But if SATA is your only option, grab this at the cheapest listing you can find and don't look back.

The Samsung 850 EVO 500GB is the drive you buy when you want to rescue an old laptop from the spinning rust era. It's a SATA III drive, so it tops out around 540 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write, which sounds quaint next to modern NVMe drives. But if you're coming from a mechanical hard drive, this thing feels like a time machine. Boot times drop, apps snap open, and the whole system stops wheezing. The one thing to know: this is a legacy upgrade, not a performance flagship. It's the best friend an aging PC ever had.

If you're building a new PC or have an M.2 slot, skip this entirely. You'd be paying SATA prices for a fraction of NVMe performance. Go grab a Crucial T500 or XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade instead and enjoy speeds this drive can only dream about. This Samsung is for rescuing old hardware, not powering new builds.

Buy the Samsung 850 EVO 500GB if you have an older laptop or desktop with a SATA port and a spinning hard drive. It's reliable, well-supported, and the upgrade will feel transformative. Don't buy it if you have an M.2 slot available, because you can get dramatically faster storage for the same or less money. This is a rescue drive, not a performance drive. Know which one you need before you click buy.