The Samsung 990 EVO Plus is a new series of hard drives that the South Korean company has expanded its range of storage solutions. They offer versions with a storage capacity of up to 4 TB and increase performance by up to 50% compared to the previous generation

The series claims to be a hybrid solution halfway between Gen4 and Gen5 SSDs. According to Samsung supports PCIe Gen 4 x4 and PCIe Gen 5 x2 interfaces. Don’t be fooled. All Gen4 SSDs can be mounted on Gen5 motherboards, although logically they do not reach the maximum speed allowed by the upper interface.

Still, the Samsung 990 EVO Plus is a great solution, as befits the world’s largest supplier of NAND flash-based storage. It uses the M.2 2280 format, which has become the main SSD format, with support for the NVMe protocol, and its design allows it to be used in both desktop and laptop computers.

Its transmission speed is very high, up to 7,250 / 6,300 Mbytes per second in sequential read/write and 1,050,000 and 1,400,000 IOPS in random mode. The performance increase, almost to the maximum of the PCIe Gen4 interface, was possible thanks to Samsung’s 8th generation NAND memory and its proprietary 5nm controller. The company is one of the few that has its own memories, controllers, chips and SSD production.

In addition to higher speeds, the drive is 73% more energy efficient than the previous generation. Samsung offers known good support for these units, five-year warranty and resilience of up to 2,400 Tbytes written before failures. Like other Samsung SSDs, we expect it to support 256-bit AES and TCG/Opal encryption and include free Samsung Magician software for disk management, various parameter information and firmware update.

Samsung 990 EVO Plus, versions and prices

The series will be available this fall worldwide on Samsung.com and at select retailers in three versions based on storage capacity and at the following prices:

• 1 TB: $109.99
• 2TB: $184.99
• 4TB: $344.99