Today is the day to upgrade your solid state drive, especially if you aren't using an M.2 NVMe drive yet. Samsung's 970 EVO Plus lineup is on sale right now, and the 1TB version is down to its lowest price ever at $179.99. The 2TB version is nearly $100 off what it was going for in May and down to a new low at $349.99. You can even get the 500GB version for $99.99, also a new low. We're seeing these prices at several retailers, too, including Newegg and Best Buy (although the 1TB at Best Buy is $10 more expensive).
You already know that solid state drives are the way to go when it comes to speeds much faster than hard drives. They are also in general more reliable because they don't have any moving parts. However, you should also know that there's a big difference between different types of SSDs. Particularly when we're talking about M.2 versus SATA form factors because M.2 SSDs can (although they don't always) have the NVMe protocol, which can increase the read and write speeds of your SSD by two times or more.
The 970 Evo Plus, for example, has a sequential read and write performance up to 3,500 MB/s and 3,300 MB/s respectively. Compare that to a SATA drive like the Samsung 860 EVO, which has read/write speeds of 550 and 520 MB/s. And that's still faster than a popular hard drive like the WD Red, which has read/write speeds around 150 MB/s. The 970 EVO Plus just puts them all to shame, though.
The 970 EVO Plus has a lot of other features, too. You can optimize the performance and protect your data. Get seamless cloning and file transfers using Samsung's Magician software. You'll receive automatic firmware updates, too. The Dynamic Thermal Guard protects your drive and monitors it for changes in the optimal temperature to help minimize performance drops.
Samsung covers the SSD with a warranty that's good for either five years or for the first 600 written terabytes.
