Samsung Unveils 960 PRO And 960 EVO NVMe M.2 SSDs

It hardly seems like the 950 Pro is a year old, yet Samsung has just kicked off its 2016 SSD Global Summit with quite a bang. The 950 PRO has proven to be a tough M.2 SSD to beat, and although many competitors were initially announced last year only a couple eventually ever appeared. Unfortunately for the 950 PRO its reign has come to an end as the 960 PRO looks to be a straight upgrade in every possible respect.

A table summarizes the data best, but suffice to say the 960 PRO offers better performance in every possible metric, and starts at a lower MSRP than its predecessor. But perhaps most important of all is power consumption is slated to be lower which should help reduce incidences of thermal throttling that the 950 PRO suffered from.

Half a watt may not seem like much, but is nonetheless impressive when factoring in the difference in controllers. While the 950’s UBX controller featured three cores, the 960 models both utilize a newer Polaris controller that comes packed with a whopping five cores.

In addition to the decreased power draw the 960 drives are said to feature a thin layer of copper baked into the sticker label in a sort of hidden heatspreader. Combined with the new controller this label sandwich is purportedly effective enough that the 960 PRO can last 50% longer before it has to begin throttling during a sequential read test. Another noteworthy feature being touted is a new option in Samsung’s Magician software that can force an instant secure file erase, as opposed to TRIM which allows the drive to decide when it wants to actually clear the TRIM’d data.

While we admittedly focus too much on the 960 PRO, it is the 960 EVO that will assuredly garner more interest and more sales. Even the EVO is hard to argue against when it looks to deliver better-than-950 PRO levels of performance at almost a quarter lower MSRP.

It is rare to see a new model offer better everything at a lower price, though anxious buyers are still going to have to wait until next month to order them. Also current indications are the 2TB model will launch at a later date, as in order to achieve the capacity Samsung combines the Polaris controller with an additional NAND chip stacked on top. Between the 960 PRO and EVO Samsung looks to have all its bases covered, though we can’t help but dream how a 960 PRO might fair when paired with one or two of these…