The newest solid state drives from Samsung have started trickling into retail, and while that's good news in and of itself, the better news is that they're selling for less than what Samsung announced.
It's not just one or two models, either. Every single one of Samsung's 970 Pro and 970 Evo drives now carry a lower price tag. Here's a look at what the 970 Pro drives are selling for on Newegg, compared to their original prices:
- Samsung 970 Pro 1TB: $500 (down from $630)
- Samsung 970 Pro 512GB: $250 (down from $330)
And here's a look at the new 970 Evo pricing:
- Samsung 970 Evo 2TB: $800 (down from $850)
- Samsung 970 Evo 1TB: $400 (down from $450)
- Samsung 970 Evo 500GB: $200 (down from $230)
- Samsung 970 Evo 250GB: $110 (down from $120)
It seems like Samsung is feeling the heat from an increasingly competitive field. Western Digital, for example, recently launched a line of high-speed NVMe SSDs at aggressive price points. Samsung's 970 Evo drives are now a little cheaper than WD's lineup, and it's 970 Pro has dipped below 960 Pro pricing on Amazon. The 970 Evo 500GB also matches the lowest price we've seen on the 960 Evo 500GB.
In our testing, we found that the 970 Evo comes close to saturating the PCIe bus with x4 Gen3 connections, especially for sequential transfers. Not that you need that kind of speed for gaming, but if do a lot of file transfers on your PC, the added throughput versus SATA can come in handy.
"Samsung's 970 Evo is a great drive, and it deserves consideration along with plenty of other good SSDs. It's fast and has a reasonable price, as far as NVMe drives go, and comes with a longer warranty and improved endurance," Jarred Walton noted.
That longer warranty, by the way, is five years (applies to both the 970 Pro and 970 Evo). None of the drives are listed on Amazon as of this writing, but we suspect that will change sometime later today. In the meantime, Newegg is showing stock of every model, which is where we linked to above.
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