The Samsung 830 range of SSDs start at
64GB, but the high price set against low capacity makes the cheapest version a
poor choice of purchase. Instead, the 128GB version offers a much more
reasonable size at a much fairer price: twice the storage for only $60 more.
The Samsung 830 line is notable for being
ultra-thin -only 7mm at its thickest point - and is designed so that it can fit
in the likes of thin ultrabooks and other space-conscious notebooks, although
that won't stop you fitting it in a desktop. Indeed, the retail kit comes in
two versions: a laptop upgrade kit, and a desktop upgrade kit.
The laptop version comes with a USB adaptor
and a copy of Norton Ghost, while the desktop version comes with a bay
converter and the necessary cables. It's easy to take for granted the
convenience of having two different kits available, especially when they're
being offered at the same price, but Samsung should be praised for making it as
easy as possible to buy and install the drive.
Unlike many drives, the 830 doesn't use a
SandForce (or Indilinx) controller, instead using a Samsung-manufactured
three-core chip. Indeed, every part of this drive is manufactured by Samsung,
so you can expect a reasonable level of quality and synchronicity to
performance and design off the bat.
While the 830's read and write speeds can
reach their maximum levels, it's worth noting that even taking that into
account, the write speed is substantially lower than other SATA 6Gbps drives.
Again, we're still talking a different league to platter-based hard disks, but
if write performance is a major concern for you (if, for example, you do a lot
of HD video editing), it's worth taking into account.
Ultimately, the Samsung 830's fantastic
retail kits make it a good purchase for beginners looking to install their
first new hard drive, but general users can find better performance at a
cheaper price elsewhere, and specialists will be turned off by the poor write
speeds. A mixed bag, but in the end, a mostly disappointing one.
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Details
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Price
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$215.98
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Capacity
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128GB
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Read speed
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520MB/S
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Write speed
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320MB/S
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Max power consumption
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0.15W
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Idle power consumption
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0.08W
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