Update 1/23: Samsung has officially announced the 860 Pro and 860 Evo consumer SSDs. Storage sizes range from 256GB to the rumored (and now confirmed) 4TB, with prices going from $139.99 for 256GB Pro to $1,899.99 for the 4TB Pro model. Samsung’s 860 Evo 256GB starts at a much more approachable price of $99.99. As expected, the 860 Pro drives feature up to 560/530 MB/s speeds and come with Samsung’s normal 5-year warranty.
SSDs are becoming more commonplace in everyday life now, and I’m super excited about that. One of the best upgrades computers have received in recent memory is not faster processors, graphics cards, or RAM. It’s storage, and that is mainly because you can request data as much as you want, but unless your storage drive can keep up, you’re out of luck.
Larger SSDs generally are hard to come by, especially in the models around the 4TB level. The current largest 4TB drive available from Samsung is the 850 Evo with speeds up to 540MB/s and 520MB/s. If you’d rather get the Samsung 850 Pro, which brings faster speeds and a better warranty, you’re limited to a 2TB maximum.
Well, it was recently spotted that Samsung has a SATA based 860 Pro 4TB drive coming out, though the listing was quickly pulled. This new drive will sport read speeds up to 560MB/s and write of up to 530MB/s. Though not much faster than the previous generation 850 Evo, the warranty on the 860 Pro drives is much better, if current standards are to be believed.
The 850 Evo drives carry a 5-year warranty, while the 850 Pro drives carry an upgraded 10-year warranty, as Samsung expects users of the 850 Pro to be more heavy and industrial rather than consumer-level. So, we can only hope that the upgraded 860 Pro will carry a similar warranty (or better) than its predecessor.
The price of the 860 Pro is seeing a bump over the previous generation, as well. The current 4TB 850 Evo is around $1,600, while the new 860 Pro will sport a price closer to $1,900 if the early reports are to be trusted here. Pricing is always subject to availability and can change at a moments notice before launch.
4TB SSDs hopefully will start to decline in price down to a point where consumers can actually afford them. If you take the cost per GB of HDD storage from 2008, a 4TB drive would have cost just under $1,100.
With all that said, there is no official release date for Samsung’s 860 Pro 4TB SSD, nor is there an “official” price. All is speculation based on a listing that was only up for a few moments, but those listings are generally very spot on.
Do note that this is not an official announcement as of yet, and this is just what we have seen hit the interwebs, but Samsung is due to launch its new SSD here soon and from our research, we can expect the storage and price to be right around here.
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