Samsung 870 EVO 250GB SATA III 2.5"

The 870 EVO is the Toyota Camry of SSDs, boring, reliable, and it just works. If you're still on a hard drive, this is your upgrade.

The 560 MB/s read and 530 MB/s write speeds put it in the bottom half of our database for raw speed, but that's missing the point. This drive isn't competing with NVMe drives. It's competing with the old 5400 RPM hard drive in your mom's laptop. In that context, it's a rocket. The DRAM cache and TLC NAND keep things feeling snappy in everyday use, and the 150 TBW endurance rating is well above average for a drive this size. What surprised us is how well it holds up in the social proof department, it's in the 95th percentile, which means people genuinely love this thing.

The 870 EVO's real competition isn't the Crucial T500 or WD_BLACK SN8100, those are NVMe drives in a completely different league. If your system supports NVMe, get one of those instead and don't look back. But if you're stuck with SATA, the 870 EVO goes up against drives like the Crucial MX500 and WD Blue 3D NAND. The Samsung costs a bit more, but the warranty and consistency are worth it. The MSI SPATIUM and XPG GAMMIX drives are NVMe too, so they're not really in this conversation unless you're building new.

Pricing is all over the place right now, from USD 140 to USD 199 across five listings. That's a USD 59 spread for the same drive, which is wild. At the low end, it's a fair deal for the reliability you're getting. At the high end, you're getting fleeced. Shop around and don't pay more than the low end of that range. The 5-year warranty and Samsung's track record justify a small premium over no-name drives, but not a USD 59 one.

The Samsung 870 EVO is the safe, boring choice for breathing life into an old laptop or desktop, and that's exactly why people keep buying it. It's a SATA drive, so it's capped at around 560 MB/s, but for anyone coming from a spinning hard drive, it's a night and day difference. The one thing to know is this: it's not a speed demon, but it's one of the most reliable 2.5-inch SSDs you can buy.

If you're building a new system or your motherboard has an M.2 slot, skip this entirely. An NVMe drive like the Crucial T500 will run circles around it for similar money. This drive is for breathing life into old hardware, not for new builds.

If you need a SATA SSD and you want to set it and forget it, buy the 870 EVO. It's not the fastest, it's not the cheapest, but it's the one you'll still be using in five years. For an OS drive in an older machine, this is the easy recommendation.