Event Coverage

HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2016: Editor's Choice - Part 2

By Team HardwareZone - 27 Feb 2016

Best Solid State Drive

Best Solid State Drive 

It’s no secret at this point that SSDs are seriously quick, and that if you are still using a mechanical hard disk drive, you’ll get the biggest performance boost simply by switching to an SSD. And for a couple of years now, the SATA interface has been the limiting factor in SSD performance, and 2015 was the year that SSD manufacturers finally got serious about faster interfaces. To make the cut for this year’s Tech Awards, the SSD must be offered with a PCIe interface and must come in 480GB, 500GB or 512GB capacities.

Nominees: 
 

  • Intel SSD 750 Series
  • Kingston HyperX Predator
  • Plextor M6e Black Edition
  • Samsung SSD 950 Pro

 

And the winner is...

Samsung SSD 950 Pro

For the past two or so years, Samsung has done a stellar job in cementing its position as the world’s foremost purveyor of SSDs. Thanks to its enviable position as one of the few truly integrated SSD manufacturers, Samsung has been able to provide innovative solutions and products like no other SSD manufacturer can.

For 2015, the highlight product was the Samsung SSD 950 Pro. It’s offered in an M.2 form factor and uses the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface for blazing transfer speeds. If that’s not all, it also uses V-NAND and supports the latest NVMe protocol. What this means is that the Samsung SSD 950 Pro is blazing fast, and it was the fastest drive we have tested this year. Points were also awarded to the accompanying Samsung Magician app that is used to monitor and manage the drive as it is easy to use. Our only gripe with the drive is that support for NVMe is still somewhat patchy as write performance in high queue depth scenarios were below expectations. Here's a quick snapshot of the full set of results from our shootout:-


Score Breakdown
Criteria/Model Intel SSD 750 Series Kingston HyperX Predator Plextor M6e Black Edition Samsung SSD 950 Pro
Performance 8.5 8.0
6.5 9.0
Features 7.5 7.5 9.0 8.5
Value 8.0 7.5 4.0 8.5
(adjusted up from 8.0 in original review)
Overall 8.0
7.5 6.5 8.5
Price $609 $573 $650 $599

*Note: Prices and ratings listed are accurate at the time of evaluation.

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

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