Samsung 470 Series 256GB SSD Full Review

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Conclusion:

PROS:  

• Excellent sequential read and write performance*
• Excellent random read IOPS / NCQ scaling performance*
• Attractive and light weight brushed aluminum housing.
• 1.8″ form factor internals open up some more possibilities for those willing to get their hands dirty.

CONS:

• * Very poor performance in mixed read+write scenarios.

Pricing:

While MSRP’s for the 470 are $150 (64GB), $300 (128GB), and $600 (256GB), street prices appear to have dropped rapidly.
Here are the best street prices I could find at the time of this writing:

• 64GB:   $130 ($2.03/GB) (Newegg)
• 128GB: $260 ($2.03/GB) (TigerDirect)
• 256GB: $489 ($1.91/GB) (Buy.com)

Final Thoughts:  

Samsung’s new 470 Series is absolutely a step above the previous generation. Sequential write speeds are among the fastest we’ve tested. The new controller enables a significant random read IOPS boost at higher queue depths. While our tests showed great improvements in many areas, further analysis of the results revealed a chink in the armor – hitting the 470 with simultaneous reads and writes caused both operations to suffer greatly once the write cache was full, dropping performance to HDD-class speeds. Copying large or even smaller files from/to the drive took longer than we’d hoped to see from this new unit.

While I agree that typical users will not encounter this issue often, power users are likely to see the disadvantage in their daily usage. That said, cost/GB is respectable and there is always the possibility of further performance tuning through a future firmware update (though none are currently planned).