Samsung 950 PRO M.2 SSDs Announced

Samsung has unveiled the highly anticipated Samsung 950 PRO SSD M.2, designed to meet the demands of high-performance consumer and business laptops and PCs. Because it uses the M.2 form factor, these tiny SSDs can be used in a variety of uses cases including ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations all the while benefiting from Samsung’s storage endurance, reliability and energy efficiency pedigree.  The Samsung 950 SSD is released as a successor to their very impressive line of 850 PRO SSDs.

Samsung has unveiled the highly anticipated Samsung 950 PRO SSD M.2, designed to meet the demands of high-performance consumer and business laptops and PCs. Because it uses the M.2 form factor, these tiny SSDs can be used in a variety of uses cases including ultra-slim notebook PCs and workstations all the while benefiting from Samsung’s storage endurance, reliability and energy efficiency pedigree.  The Samsung 950 SSD is released as a successor to their very impressive line of 850 PRO SSDs.

We previously looked at Samsung’s SM951-NVMe M.2 NVMe SSD (as well as an AHCI-based PCIe 3.0 version) back in May, which added a powerful and welcomed drive to the solid-state market. The biggest difference between the two M.2 SSDs is that the Samsung 950 PRO SSD leverages the company’s new V-NAND technology, which their first consumer-grade NVMe M.2 drive to do so. It also supports the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. 

With NVMe, users will be able to benefit from improved performance and power efficiency, which will increase battery life and likely reduce operating costs. Additionally, Samsung indicates that their new 850 Pro M.2 line is designed for professionals who need top-class performance, higher bandwidth and lower latency from their high-end PCs or workstations for tasks such as computer-aided design, gaming, data analysis and engineering simulation. The compact M.2 2280 form factor also makes it compatible with any next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that are equipped with an M.2 PCIe slot and support the interface.

Because Samsung 950 PRO SSD features the PCIe Gen.3 x4 interface and supports the NVMe protocol, the company’s new drive offers improved random and sequential performance over SATA interface drives that use the older AHCI protocol, allowing it to boast up to four times the IOPS than traditional SATA SSDs.

Samsung 950 PRO SSD  M.2 Specifications

• Capacities: 512GB and 256GB
• Dimension (WxHxD): Max. 80.15 x 22.15 x 2.38 (mm)
• Performance:
  • Sequential read/write speeds of up to 2,500MB/s and 1,500MB/s.
  • Random read performance is up to 300,000 IOPS, with write speeds of up to 110,000 IOPS.
• Second generation MLC V-NAND 32-layer 128Gb die with UBX controller and magician software
• Interface: PCIe 3.0 x4 (up to 32 GB/s) NVMe 1.1
• TRIM Support
• S.M.A.R.T Support
• GC (Garbage Collection)
• Security and reliability:
  • AES 256-bit Full Disk Encryption to protect data
  • Dynamic Thermal Guard, which can protect the device and data in inclement weather from 0 to 70 degrees Celsius.
  • Withstands physical shock up to 1500G/0.5ms and vibrations up to 20G
• 200 TBW for the 256GB and 400TBW for the 512GB
• Power consumption (Idle): Max. 1.7 Watts
• 5-year limited warranty

Availability and Pricing

The 950 PRO is slated for an early October, 2015, release priced at $199.99 (256GB) and $349.99 (512GB) capacity.

Samsung 950 Pro M.2

Discuss this story

Sign up for the StorageReview newsletter