welcome to my unboxing and First Look perhaps a little belated but better late
than never as I like to say all the time because that's something that I always
say the Samsung 840 SSD so this is
different from the 840 Pro and we actually have a slightly unique sort of
mix of 840 and 840 Pro so if you've already seen our 840 Pro unboxing you'll
know that that's the one that has Beast performance basically As Good As It Gets
in the market it also is in a slightly larger capacity so it's 28 256 and 512
versus 120 250 and 500 gigs for the 840
it also comes in a slightly different package although both versions are
available for both different drives so this one right here our 840 Pro is the
barar drive version that just comes with the data migration software and the
drive itself r840 is the version that
comes with the desktop and laptop installation kit included so in this
case you have to slice all the way through the sticker in order for the Box to come apart there we go good work
Linus and the drives look pretty darn
near identical on the top the only way to tell the difference between an 840
and an 840 Pro is the fact that there's no Pro here also the fact that it comes
in a different capacity it's a SATA 36 GB per second drive it uses Samsung's
latest controller designed by Samsung
and it has oh cool oh okay so they've got a 2 millimeter uh clip here that
allows you to go from a 7 millimeter Drive to a 9mm Drive depending on what
the requirements are for your particular notebook that's really handy in a
desktop it makes no difference whatsoever but it's uh it's really good
to have for for a notebook cuz yeah if
you have the slightly the wrong drive it just won't fit and that'll be a bit of a
problem all right so software wise I was
talking about their controller right you know what we never did go through this
so it's using their Three core MDX controller designed by Samsung for
Samsung just like everything else in this drive so the main advantage for
Samsung is the fact that the controller the
firmware The Flash the RAM every single
thing in here is designed and manufactured by Samsung no one else does
this not Intel not crucial nobody else
does this for example crucial is using a thirdparty controller chipset so they're
writing firmware for it they're manufacturing their own Flash and RAM
but they missed that one key component and then Intel is using sandforce
controllers so just totally totally using I me their own firmware for it but
totally using someone else's stuff whereas Samsung doesn't do that it uses
toggle ddr2 Nan flash memory this is TLC
memory more on that in a moment ddr2 SD RAM cach memory AES 256bit encryption is
built into the drive it comes with their magician software which is basically uh
SSD performance optimization so manual trim uh Benchmark testing security race
and firmware updates as well as their data migration software the 840 also has
a three-year warranty compared to the 5year warranty on the 840 Pro it is
designed more for a consumer work cycle
than like a prosumer or professional work cycle so the 840 is the perfect
drive for someone like your gamer friend or your mom or whoever else where it's
more of a mainstream customer it's less expensive but they're not expecting that
customer to be writing you know five 10 gigs of data to the drive every single
day because like all SSD drives the 840
and the 840 Pro have a limited number of right cycles and TLC Flash compared to
mlc so 2 bit per cell Flash versus 3 bit
per cell flash is inherently less
durable so it's not going to last as long so if it's someone who's using
their SSD as you know a scratch disc or something for working on very large
video or photo files then that's going to be a bit of a problem for something
like a non-pro level Drive hence the branding 840 refers to the generation of
products so you've got the 840 and the 840 Pro for more like a pro user or
someone who's more of a heavy user so let's have a look at what else is
included with the 840 we've got
a thing that has a thing inside there's your manual and software download the
latest from the Samsung website if you sort of care about that sort of thing oo
stickers Samsung SSD activated those are
kind of neat stickers I like stickers warranty statement summary for the 840
and the 840 Pro there's a bracket so that's a 2 and 1/2 in to 3 and 1/2 in
bracket it's made of aluminum so it's going to be lightweight if you're installing it in the desktop they've
also got all the screws that you might need in order to go ahead and do that
their installation a SATA cable is included no way oh this is awesome these
are handy this is one of those USB to ah
here we go USB to SATA adapters so
instead of having see this this is the kind of thing I like uh Kingston had a
kit they had um a desktop UPG a notebook upgrade kit where they included an
actual 2 and 1/2 in Drive enclosure with the thing it was inside the SSD box I
was like really a whole 2 and 1 half in driving that's not very convenient cuz
you actually have to take the thing put it in the thing screw it into the thing
close it up and then you plug that into like the wall and then plug that into I
was like what really these are awesome though this is uh kind of like seat's
glex um goflex external uh external
drives right where the whole thing is data and power all through USB and then
it plugs into the back of the SSD just like this so there's your SATA 3
interface there's your SATA interface on the back there you just go like that you
can run the Drive backup or drive migration tool that is provided by
Samsung and then you do your swap so you actually leave the drive in the notebook
you plug in this one you run everything then you swap them and you're good to go
so I think that pretty much covers it don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech
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