Which 2.5" SSD would you recommend for a Dell Inspiron laptop? Samsung's EVO 840 mode or EVO 850 model?

Question

I need to upgrade my Dell Inspiron 7352 laptop from its HDD to an SSD. I'm deliberating between two similar models of SSD:

1. Samsung EVO 840
2. Samsung EVO 850

Having looked at the specs for both products. They seem nearly identical in both interface, IOPS performance and sequential read and write performance.

However, at the time of writing, the EVO 840 retails at around $325 while the EVO 850 costs much less: around $150.

Which of the two models would you recommend considering the price differences? Does the costlier model have advantages that I'm missing?

Answer 1

The 840 EVO and 850 EVO are both consumer TLC SSDs by Samsung. The EVO series doesn't exactly have any differentiation, and the 850 EVO is not the higher end model, rather, it is the newer generation. The reason that the 840 EVO has risen in price is most likely because it's an retired series and therefore no longer manufactured in volume.

The chief differences between the two SSDs are in the NAND and controller. The inclusion of 3D V-NAND improves performance and write endurance, while the downgrade of the controller to two cores would decrease it. The overall effect in the wild would appear to be a moderate increase in write and mixed IO speed, with a more minor increase in read speed and a minor decrease in deep queue read speed. Overall, read and random mixed IO would probably play the major role in normal desktop operation, You should get no advantages with the older 840 EVO.