Samsung launches 950 PRO SSD, weighs 10g, starts at $199 for 256 GB

“The global market for SSDs is increasing. No longer are consumers dismissing the idea of purchasing an SSD solely because they think their price is too high. According to a survey, we did with Google, we can see that users are looking for better capacity and performance when it comes to SSDs,” said Un-Soo Kim, Samsung senior vice-president for branded memory, memory business.

Samsung 950 Pro SSD uses Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) interface (Source: Samsung)

The 950 PRO SSD is the company’s first consumer ready SSD to use Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe), an interface used mostly in enterprise systems.

“The NVMe interface on the 950 Pro is a clear break from the past. It will unleash the full potential of NAND flash storage. It is only recently that the consumer PC market has come together with an ecosystem for NVMe support. The new Intel SkyLake processors, the Windows 10 OS which driver support for NVMe makes this shift possible,” said Kim. Linux will also start supporting NVMe interface soon.

It also comes with Samsung’s proprietary vertical NAND (v-NAND) technology, and has a compact m.2 form factor. Samsung is promising enterprise-level technology, read/write speeds, reduced latency and better battery performance for laptops with its new 950 PRO SSD.

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Samsung says it expects to ship 13 million units of branded V-NAND SSD units this year, globally.

The 950 Pro SSD supports the PCIe Gen.3×4 lane interface. Samsung claims that the two SSDs have a sequential read/write speeds of 2500 (512GB) and 1500 (256GB) mbps. It comes with 512 MB LDDR3 RAM.

The new SSDs are aimed at professionals, designers, engineers, etc and those whose work depends on high-speed SSD for data access, running simulations, graphics, etc.

The new 950 PRO SSD also comes with AES 256-bit full disk encryption to protect data and a Dynamic Thermal Guard to protect the drive from inclement weather conditions (0 to 70 Celsius).

Both version of the new 950 PRO SSD will come with 5 year limited warranty. Samsung also announced that it will launch a 4TB version of 850 PRO and a 1TB version of 850 Evo in early 2016.

Disclaimer: The journalist is attending the launch in Seoul on the invitation of Samsung India