Need four terabytes of lightning-fast storage? $1,500 can buy you a 4TB Samsung 850 EVO solid state drive, all crammed into a 2.5 inch form factor drive.
Photography and video retailer Adorama is offering the 4TB version right now, which surprised hardware enthusiasts. Samsung never really announced a 4TB version of the drive, according to Tom’s Hardware, but did make a passive mention of it in a May 2016 data sheet. The specific model is currently on backorder at Adorama, with no details available about a shipping date. But the fact that it’s listed for sale at all suggests a wide release is coming soon.
The Evo 850 launched in late 2014, and at the time maxed out at 1TB of storage for $500. Today a 1TB Evo 850 costs $320 on Newegg, and 2TB costs $675. If the $1,500 price point for a 4TB drive is universal, the 4TB model is not economical on a per-gigabyte basis.
Still, if you want a massive amount of fast storage in a small space, the 4TB Evo 850 could be worth it. This 4TB solid state drive comes in the standard 2.5 inch form factor common in laptops, and is only 7 millimeters thick.
The 4TB 850 EVO offers a sequential read speed of 540 megabytes per second , and a sequential write speed 520MBps. And energy usage isn’t terrible, considering the size, with 3.1 watts for reading and 3.6W for writing. While idle, the drive users just 70 milliwatts; while asleep, 10mW.
At $1,500, this drive costs more than most computers. Most people probably won’t be clamoring for this drive, at least not at this price point, though video editors will probably be interested. For the rest of us, this is another exciting sign of tech to come, and we can’t wait for it to become more common.
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