we’ve tested.
The Seagate is a good choice if you’re familiar with the brand and want one of the better hard drives that will give you a lot more bang for your buck.
Read our review of the Seagate Seagate 400GB SSD here.
7. Samsung 860 EVO Plus SSD
This SSD is our pick for the best SSD. With SATA and M.2 support, this SSD is the best SSD for most people’s needs.
Samsung 860 EVO Plus SSD
There are two things to know when shopping for an M.2 SSD, both of which are common to the 7600 series.
The first is that the 860 EVO drive has a shorter lifespan compared to the previous generation. The SSD runs at around 120GB/s. If you have a Mac, you’ll probably want to use an SSD with more performance.
The second thing is that SSDs with higher capacities are often faster. But the performance you get is often lower. In some situations, the SSD will be slower than the SATA version.
On the other hand, the drive does look a lot better than the SATA drive, and that’s because Samsung’s 5D RENOS firmware has optimized the SSD’s performance across the board.
Read our full Samsung 860 EVO Plus SSD review here.
8. Samsung 860 EVO Plus SSD
The Samsung 860 EVO drive is a little bit different from the previous one we tested. Samsung’s 5D SSD has a slightly different interface. The MLC version of the drive is used for the SSD’s 5th generation of flash memory.
Although the MLC flash is different, it’s not that different. The only real difference is that the MLC flash is faster.
The 860 EVO Plus SSD supports USB 3.1 and USB 2.0. So you’ll be able to use the drive in both Mac OS and Windows XP.
But just like the SATA drive, the MLC flash has a different interface. So this SSD has a smaller lifespan compared to the SATA SSD.
The downside is that when you use the optical drive, the speed is only around 4.0MB/s. The downside is that when you’re using the SSD in the Mac OS, the SATA drive is faster because of its newer NVMe SSD controller.
Read our full Samsung 860 EVO Plus SSD review here.
9. Samsung 860 EVO Plus SSD
This SSD has a slightly different interface from the previous SSD in our lineup. It has a SATA 5th generation interface.
Unlike the M.2 drive, the SATA 5th is using NVMe SSD controller instead of the M.2 interface. This means that the SSD will be more expensive than the SATA drive, but it’s more performance.
The SSD runs at around 130GB/s. The SATA 5th version of the drive is around 65GB/s. So this SSD is going to be slower than the SATA drive, but similar.
The 860 EVO makes an appearance in our list because it is one of the best SSDs if you’re looking for an M.2 drive. The SATA 5th is going to give you the fastest performance, but the SATA 5th version is going to be more expensive.
Read our full Samsung 860 EVO Plus SSD review here.
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