We picked our test batch by looking at market data, current prices, and looking at other in-depth guides to the best SSDs at places such as Anandtech. The Testsįor testing, we are relying on the free and readily available Crystal Disk Mark, meaning you should be able to easily check our results. If your laptop takes standard 2.5-inch SSDs, anything in that form factor should fit great, but performance will be limited. Unless your laptop takes super-fast NVMe SSDs, the Samsung 860 EVO is the best bet on the market. At typical capacities, it's only a tad more expensive than the other drives, and there's something to be said for the fact that it comes in nearly every form factor and capacity. Though not as cheap as the least expensive drives on the market, with the 860 EVO you can expect slightly better performance, a long 5-year warranty, capacities reaching 4TB (though M.2 versions top out at 2TB), and support for features like hardware encryption that not all drives support.Īcross the board, the Samsung 860 EVO is the best laptop SSD that we tested. The 860 is actually the cheaper of the two now, as the 850 is leaving the market and prices tend to be higher. In our testing, the 860 EVO was a hair faster than the 850, even though both are limited by the SATA III interface's max speed. Though the 850 EVO is still trickling out of the market, the 860 EVO is the successor and includes a number of changes that result in better long-term endurance and some minor performance increases.

The Samsung 860 EVO launched early this year as the follow-up to the exceptionally popular Samsung 850 EVO. While the Samsung 860 EVO is still our favorite for most people, it pays to shop around-and if any of the other drives we tested is substantially cheaper, you can go with that without losing out on much. That said, unless you have a high-end laptop that supports faster 'NVMe' memory (we'll address these in a later roundup), pretty much all SSDs are going to perform about the same. It's fast, it's competitively priced, it will work with just about every laptop on the market, and it has a 5-year warranty. We've got you: We've tested the most popular solid state drives, and we believe the best overall SSD for most people is the Samsung 860 EVO Even if your laptop came with a 128GB SSD, upgrading to a bigger one can just make your life easier.īut while buying an SSD is a no-brainer, actually picking one means navigating a sea of confusing buzzwords. SSDs are cheaper than ever and easy to install, so there's really no excuse. It's 2022: If any of your devices still have a spinning hard drive-be it a laptop, gaming console, or PC-it's high time you upgrade to a solid state drive.

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