Samsung

Following up on the SSD 840 series that came out in November 2012, Samsung today announced its new entry-level solid-state drive, the 840 Evo.

The main difference between the two is the fact that the 840 Evo offers up to 1TB of storage space, double that of the 840 series, and significantly faster performance.

Like the previous drive, the 840 Evo comes in the 7mm-thick, 2.5-inch design and supports the SATA 3 (6Gbps) I/O standard.

Samsung says the 840 Evo uses its compact 10-nanometer class 128GB NAND flash memory, which the company started mass-producing in April, and is equipped with Samsung's proprietary multicore MEX controller.

Depending on the capacities, Samsung claims that the new drive offers between two and three times the speed of the 840 series, offering up to 520MBps sequential write speed and up to 540MBps read speed. In random access, the drive offers up to 98,000 IOPS.

If the company's claim is true, these numbers put the 840 Evo among the fastest consumer-grade SSDs on the market.

The Samsung SSD 840 Evo will be available in five capacities, 120GB, 250GB, 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB, and can be used in basically all applications where regular hard drives are used.

The drive becomes available for purchase in the first week of August, but it's currently unclear for how much, so check back soon for that plus our full review.