Recommended SSD Brands for Business Laptop Upgrades

ppilot

Weaksauce
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Feb 1, 2003
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So I've started to look around for SSD's to start upgrading user's laptops, but wanted to see if there were certain brands people recommended or more importantly, avoided.

I've always bought Samsungs for my personal builds, but always see HP's, Sandisk, Intel, and especially ADATA on Sale.

Also do you recommend a minimum TBW for basic office users or does is not really matter?

Thanks for your help!
 
Samsung, Intel and Crucial are really good brands in my experience, those are my gotto every time i do a build.
 
Samsung, Intel and Crucial are really good brands in my experience, those are my gotto every time i do a build.

Yeah I was leaning towards those....Any thoughts on Micron's business lineup (1300 and 2200)?
 
Samsung is expensive, but I still buy them. I've never had one gack. And I like the drive copy tools that come with Samsung Magician.

I'll admit I'm not hot about the Samsung QVO drives, they make me twitch.
 
Samsung was #1 for so long because they had some of the cheapest drives and best reliability. Intel was also top in reliability but cost too much in comparison to Samsung.
Now days, there are a ton of companies much cheaper so Samsung is the expensive stuff. Many people buy Sandisk and AData and have no issues. Actually the AData SX8200 Pro is one of the best nvme drives you can get at the moment. It is closer to the Samsung 970 Pro in performance, but costs around $90 less than the 970 EVO (or, less than half the price of the 970 Pro)
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955.html
The SU800 is a really good drive too and is one of the cheapest.
 
Samsung was #1 for so long because they had some of the cheapest drives and best reliability. Intel was also top in reliability but cost too much in comparison to Samsung.
Now days, there are a ton of companies much cheaper so Samsung is the expensive stuff. Many people buy Sandisk and AData and have no issues. Actually the AData SX8200 Pro is one of the best nvme drives you can get at the moment. It is closer to the Samsung 970 Pro in performance, but costs around $90 less than the 970 EVO (or, less than half the price of the 970 Pro)
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955.html
The SU800 is a really good drive too and is one of the cheapest.

I guess my concern with Adata would be the Warranty and Support process. Have people had any experiences with them?
 
Yeah I was leaning towards those....Any thoughts on Micron's business lineup (1300 and 2200)?


Crucial is simply Micron's consumer/retail brand. Should be the same aside from minor tweaks maybe.

+1 to the recommendations others have made: Samsung, WD/SanDisk, Micron/Crucial, Intel. Be wary of QLC (4-layer) NAND devices at this time.


Samsung was #1 for so long because they had some of the cheapest drives and best reliability. Intel was also top in reliability but cost too much in comparison to Samsung.
Now days, there are a ton of companies much cheaper so Samsung is the expensive stuff. Many people buy Sandisk and AData and have no issues. Actually the AData SX8200 Pro is one of the best nvme drives you can get at the moment. It is closer to the Samsung 970 Pro in performance, but costs around $90 less than the 970 EVO (or, less than half the price of the 970 Pro)
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955.html
The SU800 is a really good drive too and is one of the cheapest.


Yeah, not really on that AData, relative to the Samsung 970 Evo. For the price, yeah, it's probably fine, and should be OK for many uses (where an even cheaper SATA SSD would also be fine). But in most tests it's in no way equal. The AData "cheats" some and uses a ton of its TLC NAND as SLC cache. But when the drive starts to fill up and it doesn't have that option, performance plummets.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759/comparing-adata-sx8200-pro-vs-hp-ex950/2
https://techreport.com/review/34431/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-1-tb-reviewed
 
Yeah, not really on that AData, relative to the Samsung 970 Evo. For the price, yeah, it's probably fine, and should be OK for many uses (where an even cheaper SATA SSD would also be fine). But in most tests it's in no way equal. The AData "cheats" some and uses a ton of its TLC NAND as SLC cache. But when the drive starts to fill up and it doesn't have that option, performance plummets.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13759/comparing-adata-sx8200-pro-vs-hp-ex950/2
https://techreport.com/review/34431/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-1-tb-reviewed

All NVME drives use an SLC cache space to give the top 3GB/s+ performance numbers, including Samsung.
 
All NVME drives use an SLC cache space to give the top 3GB/s+ performance numbers, including Samsung.


All TLC units do, sure (SSDs based on MLC/2-bit NAND, such as the 970 Pro, typically don't).

The 970 Evo uses 6 GB dedicated/36 GB dynamic SLC cache. And once that's filled, the drive's performance falls of fairly gracefully according to the previously-linked Anandtech review. The slightly cheaper but still upper-level-consumer WD SN750 behaves much the same.

The sx8200 Pro (and its brother the HP EX950), on the other hand, uses a lot of of dynamic SLC cache to cover its shortcomings. ~150 GB (taking up ~450 GB of TLC capacity, FYI) on the 1 TB model, according to the same review (no spec on the static/dynamic split is given). This is why some of its benchmarks look really good. But once its cache is filled and/or less is available due to the drive filling up, its performance drops off far more than the 970 Evo and is far more erratic. AData is, in a sense, cheating. But, like I said, that's probably OK if the price is right and it fits your usage patterns. Just don't claim its as good as the 970 Evo, because it's not.
 
I guess my concern with Adata would be the Warranty and Support process. Have people had any experiences with them?
I currently own a SX8200 and SX8200Pro, the none pro has been working fine, no issue, the pro booted fine three times, and the fourth was no longer recognized by the bios, tried it on other motherboards and was dead, i cant say much about ADATA support as Amazon exchange it, and the second has been running for a couple of months with no issues. I think they are good ssds, but would prefer Samsung, Intel and Crucial.

But really depends on what you are doing, for example Intel 905p are to me atm the best endureace/io ssds, but heck of expensive, but my workflow do benefit from them. For the average person, sata or nvme ssds are going to be the same, so it really depends on what you are doing, but you cant go wrong with Samsung, Crucial, or intel.
 
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