Samsung 860 EVO 4TB SATA III 2.5"

The Samsung 860 EVO 4TB is a reliable SATA workhorse with excellent endurance, but it's expensive and slow by modern standards. The 4TB capacity and 2400 TBW rating are the highlights. If you need SATA specifically, it's a good buy. If you have M.2 available, get an NVMe drive instead.

Sequential speeds hit the SATA ceiling at 550 MB/s read and 520 MB/s write, which is exactly what Samsung promises. Random performance is where things get less exciting, 98K read IOPS and 90K write IOPS land in the 44th percentile, which is solidly middle of the pack for SATA drives. The 78GB TurboWrite buffer helps with sustained writes, and the MJX controller keeps things steady under load. But let's be real, any NVMe drive from the last three years will run circles around this thing. The speed percentile sits at 34th, which is mediocre by today's standards. For a storage drive or game library, it's fine. For a boot drive, you can do better.

Stacked against the Western Digital Black SN850X, Kingston FURY Renegade G5, or Crucial T500, the 860 EVO looks like a relic. Those NVMe drives offer 7,000+ MB/s reads and cost less per gigabyte. The Seagate FireCuda 530R and SanDisk WD_BLACK SN8100 are also in a completely different performance class. The 860 EVO's only real advantage is the 2.5-inch SATA form factor, which matters if you're upgrading an older laptop, a PS4 Pro, or a system with no M.2 slots. For everyone else, the NVMe options are faster and cheaper.

Here's the awkward part. Prices range from $1,000 to $1,700 across three US listings, which is a massive spread. The best deal we're seeing is on Newegg, where it's listed at the lower end of that range. Even at $1,000, you're paying a premium for the 4TB capacity in a SATA form factor. The affordability percentile is 3rd, which means this is one of the most expensive SATA drives per gigabyte we've tracked. If you absolutely need 4TB in a 2.5-inch SATA slot, this is a solid choice. But if you have an M.2 slot available, you can get a faster 4TB NVMe drive for less money.

The Samsung 860 EVO 4TB is a SATA III drive that's been around the block, but it still holds up for bulk storage. You get 550 MB/s reads, 520 MB/s writes, and a beefy 2400 TBW endurance rating. It's not going to win any speed contests against NVMe drives, but that's not really the point here.

This is the drive you buy when you need a lot of space without spending a fortune on PCIe 4.0 hardware. The 4TB capacity puts it in the 93rd percentile for storage, and the endurance is a standout at 86th percentile. Just don't expect it to feel snappy compared to modern M.2 drives.

Skip this if your system has an M.2 slot. You'll pay more for less speed compared to NVMe drives like the WD Black SN850X or Crucial T500. Also skip it if you're on a tight budget, the price per gigabyte is rough. And if you need a portable drive, look elsewhere, the portable score is 16 out of 100, which is one of the worst we've seen for that use case.

Buy this if you need 4TB in a 2.5-inch SATA form factor and you value reliability over raw speed. It's a proven drive with excellent endurance and Samsung's reputation behind it. PS4 Pro owners and people upgrading older laptops will be happy. But if your system has an M.2 slot, skip this and grab an NVMe drive instead. You'll get better performance for less money.