Customer Ratings & Reviews

This SSD is super fast. It has the best performance and price. Everything was loading super fast like Data Base computer. if you buy the terabyte version. You wouldn't have any issue with performance at all from storage or raid Might mess up your motherboard from reading hard drives and limit performance. Read your motherboard information before install.

this 9100 PRO vs crucial and WD! they all top gen5 SSD! but realiablity and consistancy of speed on any task what makes this 9100 PRO speak for it self! its trully a beast!! and it perform with no sweat!

Has never let me down Samsung is the way to go when it comes to storage, I’ve only used Samsung man they can handle everything you throw at it that’s for sure! Super fast speeds sometimes I can’t even get into my bios since it boots up so fast

Love it! Was going to go for 4tb ssd 990 pro but picked up the 2tb 9100 pro instead cause it was on sale for 230$. Happy with my choice and happy with Best Buy overall! Best Buy for the win

Fastest gen 5 ssd available . Picked this up during a sale , I own this and the T 700 crucial both are good drives . But the speeds and price on this is amazing I used it in my gaming rig!

So fast whenever opening games. I knew I made a great choice switching from gen 4 to gen5

Very fast compared to my previous 980 Pro drive. I used this for my OS drive and paired it with a 4tb 9100 for my game storage. Transfers are super fast between drives.

Works amazingly well and allows the system to perform at blistering speeds.

This is my first experience with m.2 drives. Works great in my new build. Writing this review with that build. I was able to clone my old SanDisk SSD onto this using Acronis. Samsung Magician caused the dreaded Blue Screen of Death! Bought the 9100 PRO as my primary drive and the 990 PRO as my secondary. Even bought a tiny ThermalRight cooler for the primary 9100. Happy so far!

No issues reading right speeds are great for GEN five

Package Contents The package came with the Samsung 9100 Pro SSD itself, an instruction pamphlet and a link to download Samsung Magician software. Installation Installation is fairly easy if you have previous experience with installing or upgrading an NVMe SSD in your computer. For my situation, I used an external JMS583 based USB to NVMe adapter to help with my installation. My plan was to clone the contents of my existing SSD into the new Samsung 9100 Pro and then physically swap in the new SSD. Using an external USB to NVMe adapter would help with minimizing the amount of physical swapping of drives that I would need otherwise. This can be tricky because some adapter chipsets don’t work well with certain SSD controllers and vice versa so there’s a little bit of luck involved in hoping the USB to NVMe adapter you have is compatible with your new SSD. I plugged the Samsung 9100 Pro SSD into the adapter and opened up Samsung Magician. At first, Samsung Magician didn’t seem to “see” the Samsung 9100 Pro but I quickly updated my computer’s drivers and bios to the newest version and replugged the USB adapter directly to one of the motherboard’s USB ports in the back panel (I previously had it plugged into a USB port on my computer case) and it detected the Samsung 9100 Pro. I went to the Data Migration tab in Samsung Magician and selected the source (my computer’s previous main SSD) and destination (the new Samsung Pro 9100) and proceeded to clone my old SSD to the new one. The cloning process went fairly quickly (I didn’t have a lot of data in my old SSD) and I thought Samsung Magician did a really good job and was fairly easy and straightforward to use. I then turned off my computer to physically swap in the new Samsung 9100 Pro and the computer booted up with the new drive. The boot up process was super quick and did seem to go somewhat faster than before but that might be my imagination or wishful thinking. Performance The Samsung 9100 Pro SSD is my first experience with using a Gen 5 NVMe SSD and I have it installed in my Asus TUF Gaming X870-PLUS WIFI motherboard in an M.2 slot that supports Gen 5 NVMe SSDs. For cooling, I am using the stock motherboard M.2 heatsink. The Samsung 9100 Pro is replacing a Gen 4 NVMe SSD from another manufacturer. The performance benchmarks from Samsung Magician reports a sequential read speed of 14,154 MB/s and sequential write speed of 13,316 MB/s. This verifies that the Samsung 9100 Pro is working correctly in Gen 5 mode on my Asus motherboard. The benchmark results far surpasses anything I’ve seen from my previous NVMe SSDs. Additionally, the Samsung 9100 Pro has been rock solid in my computer. I haven’t noticed any glitches, instability or thermal throttling during my normal workflow. Temperatures have also been reasonable as the Samsung 9100 Pro averages around 55 C using the stock motherboard heatsink during my time with it. A fresh installation of Visual Studio 2022 took only 10 minutes and according to Samsung Magician, the temperature never went above 55 C during the installation. However, I’m not sure if Samsung Magician was actively updating the temperature measurement on the Performance Benchmark screen I was looking at. I noticed that it was still displaying a temperature of 55 C the following day and didn’t change until I switched to the Dashboard view. Once I switched, it updated the temperature to 54 C. Using Visual Studio 2022 to clone a repository, edit source code, and compile and build my projects was extremely zippy and responsive. Browsing the internet and consuming media was also super responsive. Playing games has also been fantastic. Black Myth Wukong ran very smoothly and I never noticed any stuttering when arriving at a new location (which could indicate loading of new game resources from the SSD). Also, I took a break from playing this game and there was an update available for it when I loaded it up again. The update was very quick. Also, when I upgraded the drivers of my graphics card to the newest version, it caused the game to recompile shaders and this seemed to occur much faster than before. Summary The Samsung 9100 Pro is an excellent Gen 5 NVMe SSD. It’s the fastest SSD I have ever used, has been rock solid and super stable, and I never noticed any thermal throttling. The temperature seemed to average around 55 C using the stock motherboard SSD heatsink which I consider to be cool running. My computer feels super responsive and zippy in my normal workflows. While artificial benchmarks show spectacular improvements, the improvements experienced during normal workflow activities is probably a little bit more subtle. My computer was already pretty fast and responsive using my Gen 4 SSD. It now feels a little bit more zippy with the Samsung 9100 Pro but this might be due to a placebo effect. Overall, I can easily recommend the Samsung 9100 Pro if you want the best and you have a motherboard that has a Gen 5 M.2 slot to take advantage of it.

When I saw this new high-speed, state-of-the-art Samsung 9100 PRO Internal SSD PCIe Gen 5x4 NVMe, I had to order it immediately. Then I started researching what was needed to support a PCIe Gen 5 device and realized that all my latest desktop motherboards and laptops were PCIe Gen 4, which supports about half of the 14,700 MB/s that this SSD is rated. I am not quite ready to invest big dollars in a new build with a motherboard that supports Gen 5. As it is, there are only a few that actually exist now. So, I did research on a possible Gen 5 expansion card, but again realized that it will not reach full potential mounted in a Gen 4 slot. I decided to settle on an external Thunderbolt 4 enclosure (the fastest port my rigs have at the moment) that supports an M.2 2280 NVMe SSD such as the 9100 PRO. I saw some enclosures that supported up to 80 Gbps transfer rates, but almost all of them warned you not to use a Gen 5 SSD. Disappointed, I settled for an enclosure supporting 40 Gbps on a Thunderbolt 4 USB C configuration port, which is nowhere near utilizing the capability of this SSD. It was an easy setup to place the Samsung 9100 Pro into its new, heavy, Fanless Aluminum Enclosure and place some silicon thermal pads to transfer heat away from the chips and to the aluminum heatsink. (The heatsink has been very effective at keeping the temperature between 79 degrees F at idle and 98 degrees F in full usage.) Then I went to the Samsung website and downloaded their excellent Magician Software that has drive and data management tools that can initialize, format and partition the new SSD, transfer data from another drive, as well as check drive health and optimize drive performance. The Magician Software is comprehensive and easy to use. It took only a couple minutes to initialize and format the 9100 Pro and get it up and running. I took a benchmark of the 9100 Pro running at these throttled speeds and it was still impressive. (See pic.) I look at having the Samsung 9100 Pro as future-proofing for my next rig build. In the meantime, I expect to see many more motherboards and enclosures that support PCIe Gen 5 to come on the market soon and after a period of time they should come down in price. You can buy the Samsung 9100 Pro now or wait until you have the hardware to fully support it. I am going to enjoy these fantastic Thunderbolt 4 speeds now.

I have been a long time user of Samsung SSD products and have always been impressed with their speed, reliability, and the Samsung Magician software. Samsung has done it again with this 9100 PRO NVMe drive, which is their fastest drive yet. I used this with my MacBook Pro that supports Thunderbolt 4, so I was not able to test the highest possible speeds of this drive, but even without that, it is blazing fast. I was able to transfer 100 GB of files to this drive on an APFS Encrypted partition in 30 seconds, which is phenomenal. I cannot imagine ever needing anything faster than this speed for my uses. The drive got warm in my NVMe enclosure when transferring over 300 GB of files, but not hot, which is great. The highest temp it reached after transferring over 300 GB of files in a short period was 43 C. One of the things I really like about Samsung SSD drives is the continued support and great software that Samsung provides. With the Samsung Magician software, you can easily check for and install firmware updates, view drive statistics, and view other drive information. At the time of writing this, to check for and install firmware updates, these NVMe drives must be connected to a Windows machine. If any updates are available, you can easily update the firmware from the Samsung Magician software on Windows. The Mac version of Samsung Magician does not yet support checking for and installing firmware updates on NVMe drives connected via a Thunderbolt enclosure, but I hope that will change in the future. I was able to connect this drive to a Windows machine with my Thunderbolt enclosure and confirm that it currently has the latest firmware installed. This is an excellent NVMe drive that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for fast and reliable storage. This drive is more expensive than some other options on the market, but if you are looking for an extremely fast PCIe Gen 5 drive from a trusted and reliable brand, this is the way to go. I have used many Samsung SSD drives over the years, and they have all been rock solid. And, if there are ever any issues that require a firmware update to resolve, it is very easy to check for and install firmware updates using the Samsung Magician software.

Ever since the Playstation 5 was released, SSD speed has been center stage. Gone are the days of loading screens everywhere in games. Initial loading in and out is a breeze as well with this SSD in any game I tested. When installing this SSD into the laptop I am using, I am relieved to say there were no issues. Huge relief to be honest. I was hoping to add it to my C drive, but since that is a no go, I now have 2 TBs of storage just for my Steam gaming on a separate D drive now. The allocating took no time at all either and was up and running before I actually realized it. For those interested, transferring the Steam library was painless and did not take too long either. I do want to point out that this SSD did not come with a heatsink included. I believe that I will get one in the very near future for the heat that is produced. You can find one for pretty cheap nowadays online and usually cheaper than buying together too. There is also software included for drivers and installation. I have included a picture with my review. The GUI is pretty nice here, I feel Samsung did a good job on the app to monitor the SSD with some options to turn on or off to maximise performance. I would recommend this item all the way. Not only is this going to be needed in the future, its great now in its speed of data.

One of the most prominent players in the consumer solid state disk (SSD) space has been Samsung. Since 2006, Samsung has regularly offered among the highest-performing SSDs on the market, delivering performance and reliability that other manufacturers have struggled to match. As the computing industry moves to the latest PCIe 5.0 interface, so too have SSD manufacturers begun offering new drives to take advantage of the increased speeds. Samsung’s 9100 Pro SSD is the company’s first offering optimized for the new interface, promising top-tier performance for the latest desktops, laptops, and game systems designed to harness every fragment of speed on offer. Though a little behind its competition using similar hardware and priced at a premium, Samsung’s reputation for performance and quality shines through on this new offering. Note that this drive is sold barebone - there are no adapters or cables included to transfer your data from existing disks to the 9100 Pro, and thus this product is not intended for novice users. If you are not familiar with moving or reinstalling your operating system (e.g. Windows, MacOS), speak with a Geek Squad associate for recommended services prior to purchasing. - Unboxing & Installation With little more than the disk itself and an installation guide with warranty information booklet in the box, the 9100 Pro has more packaging than product. The NVMe M.2 disk is the standard 2280 (22mm x 80mm) size, about as large as a stick of gum, and has a sticker covering the NAND with all the usual branding. This SSD is single-sided (no chips on the backside) so it should fit in nearly every device supporting 2280 size disks without issue, including game consoles and handhelds. Installing the 9100 Pro is as simple as installing any other M.2 SSD. Once recognized by the system, the disk will need to be initialized then formatted by the operating system prior to use (this typically occurs during an OS installation). Samsung uses the 1 TB = 1,000,000,000,000 bytes metric to market the drive; thus, formatted capacity is 1863 GB. There is in fact a full two terabytes of NAND memory onboard but the remainder is used as over-provisioning space, which helps to extend the life of the drive by spreading data writes to the least-used memory cells before rewriting existing ones. A five-year, 1200 terabytes written warranty should cover most use cases as only power users will see that much data written within five years, much less ten. - Performance There’s no other way to put it - the 9100 Pro is blisteringly fast. Installed in my custom desktop with a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, benchmarking the disk shows performance within margin of error of the box’s 14,700 MB/s claims for sequential reads. As to be expected, random small reads and writes drop below 1GB/s, but the IOPs (input-output operations per second) ratings are still off the charts, pushing nearly 200,000 read and 170,000 write in my testing. In more laymans’ terms, this disk performs like DDR3 RAM when reading or writing sequentially, and performs like first-generation DDR RAM when reading or writing randomly. Considering I was around when DDR was first introduced, seeing a storage device perform like system RAM feels borderline whimsical. Part of what helps the 9100 Pro achieve these speeds is the welcome inclusion of a DRAM cache. The SSD has 2GB of high-speed LPDDR4X memory that the storage controller uses to queue up data before it’s written to the NAND flash, allowing the 9100 Pro to effectively tell the host computer or game console that it is ready to receive more operations while the memory controller works in the background to write the data to the NAND. The result is that for all but large, continuous writes (such as transferring multiple 4K movies in a single go), performance remains stellar. This is a fantastic disk for high-disk-demand work like video editing and large database management - lower-tier SSDs will forego the DRAM cache and lean entirely on the NAND, resulting in a significant drop in performance (and higher wear on the disk) that power users will notice. My only concern with the 9100 Pro’s performance is that it can get fairly warm when you ask a lot of it, and it does not come with a heatsink. I saw temperatures peak at nearly 70C even when utilizing the heatsink and thermal pads my motherboard provided, while the NVMe 4.0 disk I had installed previously (a Samsung 980 Pro 1TB) rarely hit 60C. These temperatures aren’t as concerning as they would be for traditional hard disks, but in any case I would recommend utilizing a heat spreader of some kind if you are able. This is a high-performance disk pushing the envelope of what modern devices can support, after all. - Samsung Magician One of the included perks of Samsung SSDs is access to the Samsung Magician software, a complete diagnostic and device management package available for Windows, MacOS, and Android that offers many handy functions including firmware update and drive health statistics. If you have a spare M.2 slot or a USB M.2 adapter, the best feature of the software is arguably the Data Migration functionality. With just a few clicks, Samsung Magician will automatically clone your existing hard drive or SSD to the 9100 Pro (or any other Samsung SSD), given the new disk is large enough to support the transfer. Crucially, the software clones the entire disk including the Master Boot Record (MBR) or Guided Partition Table (GPT), which means after data migration you can simply swap your old disk for the newly-migrated disk and be up and running again. After years of doing this process manually or with the help of paid third-party applications every time I changed SSDs and didn’t want to reinstall my operating system, Samsung Magician worked quickly and flawlessly - the entire operation took about 20 minutes to copy a half-terabyte installation to the new disk (your speeds will vary depending on what hardware you use - USB will almost always be slower than an NVMe slot), and after swapping my old SSD to the 9100 Pro the system booted using the new hardware without any further configuration. Great stuff! - Bottom Line Samsung SSDs almost always hit their performance expectations, and the 9100 Pro is no exception. Their first PCIe 5.0 outing delivers right in line with their advertised speeds, and assuming you have a device that can harness the full potential of the latest PCIe version, you’ll be treated to an experience that’s really only limited by the rest of your hardware. To move beyond the 9100 Pro’s performance you’re spending quite a bit more money on purpose-built, datacenter optimized hardware. The Samsung Magician software is the icing on the cake that consumers and prosumers alike can utilize for a pain-free migration experience. All told, the 9100 Pro comes highly recommended!

I’m building a new Gaming PC with a PCIe 5.0 NVMe slot and wanted a main drive that could take advantage of the added speed. I went to my go to brand for high end storage, Samsung and picked up the 9100 Pro SSD with its 14700 MB/s read speed! Pros: - Super-Fast with Read of 14.7GB/s and Write of 13.4GB/s. - Options for with or without heatsink. Cons: - High MSRP. - Endurance is only 1200TBW. Check & Install: I’ve done a lot of PC builds, so to be honest here, I still have trauma from the Samsung 990 Pro driver issues a few years ago. As part of my build process, I do a driver and BIOs check on everything before starting the build using another system. I loaded the 9100 Pro into a secondary NVMe slot that was Gen 4 and booted up Samsung Magician to check the driver and run a quick test. Everything came back clear! I know this is an extra step, but I’ve made sure to check the drivers and firmware on pretty much all parts over the last few years before I get into the build to avoid any nasty surprises or damaged parts before even getting into the gaming. After the check, I took the 9100 Pro 2TB drive over to the new system and slotted it into the PCIe Gen 5 slot and was off to installing the OS without any issues! The motherboard came with its own massive heatsink, so I didn’t need the Samsung heatsink. I always like that Samsung has the option for with or without heatsink, usually only a ~$20 difference between options. This allows you to pick the drive based on what you need without having to pay for an extra heatsink when you don’t or cannot use it. Though with an MSRP of $299.99, $20 heatsink is a fraction of the overall cost of the drive so if you’re unsure of needing one, just get the heatsink version and remove it if you don’t need it. Performance: The 9100 Pro is my first Gen 5 drive experience, so I knew it was going to be fast. But it still blew my mind how fast and consistent it was. 14.7GB/s Read and 13.5GB/s Write, got lucky on the chip lottery with an extra 0.1GB/s Write speed with this one! I ran a CrystalDiskMark alongside HWMonitor to capture the temperature of the drive. Underload with a max Read & Write, the drive was staying at 66 C well under the thermal max of 70 C. This is mostly thanks to the massive heatsink on the motherboard which is the MSI X870e Tomahawk WiFi. Based on the test results, I wouldn’t recommend using the 9100 Pro without a heatsink or some kind of cooling, underload it gets very hot very quickly. Even with a large heatsink on a bench test (no case), it quickly rose up to 66 C during a load test, though the overall assembly stayed cooler at 57 C the hottest temperatures will quickly trigger a thermal throttling. If you notice you’re not getting the maximum speeds, check your temperatures and consider adding a heatsink or more airflow. Samsung lists the endurance of the 2TB model as 1200 Terabytes Written, which means the total number of writes the drive is expected to be able to perform in its life before failure. This is average for endurance of a 2TB drive, though I would have liked to see more than the standard 600 per 1TB. This should be plenty for the average user, especially gaming which I intend to use it for but professionals in video editing or graphic design might want to consider higher endurance or regular backups for their work. Conclusion: If you have a Gen 5 NVMe slot on your motherboard and want to take full advantage of the Gen 5 speeds, then you’re going to want to pick up the Samsung 9100 Pro! The optional heatsink might be needed if your motherboard or gaming console doesn’t have one already as this drive is as hot as it is fast. I’ll be adding the Samsung 9100 Pro to my list of Gen 5 drives to consider for the high-end gaming builds.

I have been a fan of Samsung SSDs for some time. They are not the only good SSD on the market, but they seem to be one of the best overall. I've gotten consistently great performance and reliability from the Samsung SSDs I've owned, and don't expect anything less from the 9100 PRO. I picked up the 9100 PRO to use later this year in my next build, which will replace a 10 year old desktop build that cannot be upgraded to Windows 11. I am able to test the 9100 PRO in a Windows 11 desktop to make sure it functions properly, but the main board supports only PCIe Gen 3 so I will not be able to get the specified transfer rates for the Gen 5 9100 PRO. The 9100 PRO was installed in an open M.2 location on the main board. The build quality of the SSD is impressive. It is sturdy, thin and light, and has intelligent thermal features in the form of a nickel coated controller and head spreader label. Windows 11 doesn't initially recognize the additional storage volume after reboot but HWiNFO64 finds the 9100 PRO, so it is installed and functioning. After using the Windows Disk Management tool to initialize the SSD and run a quick format, Windows 11 finds an empty 2GB volume named 9100P that is available as D:. The theoretical maximum performance of a PCIe Gen 3 lane is 1 GB/s. This doubles to 2 GB/s for PCIe Gen 4, and again to 4 GB/s for PCIe Gen 5. This means that PCIe 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 x4 SSDs have a theoretical maximum performance of 4 GB/s, 8 GB/s and 16 GB/s respectively. However, an older generation controller will limit the performance of a newer generation SSD. To get rated Gen 5 performance, a Gen 5 SSD needs to be connected to a Gen 5 controller that doesn't share bandwidth with some other device. Running the CrystalDiskMark benchmark showed that my performance is indeed limited to PCIe Gen 3 speeds by the Gen 3 controller on my main board. SSD idle temperature was 35C and rose to 54C during testing. No heat sink was installed on the SSD for this initial testing. Looking at various benchmark sites, the 9100 PRO really shines on certain benchmarks and transfer types, but less so on others. Perhaps the most interesting question regarding any new Gen 5 SSD device is, "Do I need it?" The first obvious consideration is that you have a Gen 5 controller and M.2 location available, otherwise you will be limited by your Gen 4 or Gen 3 controller transfer rate. The other big consideration is your usage and workload. Of the various factors that contribute to the overall delay of loading a single program or module into memory from an SSD, the actual data transfer time that will be impacted by PCIe transfer bandwidth can be a relatively small one. Other hardware and software contributors to the overall delay of an I/O transfer don't change much if at all for a single, moderate-sized transfer. If you have a Gen 4 SSD and your workload involves a lot of large file transfers and time spent waiting for them to complete, you may benefit greatly from a Gen 5 SSD. If your workload is not fundamentally I/O bound, you probably won't notice a great difference in system behavior with a Gen 5 SSD vs. a Gen 4 SSD. Overall the 9100 PRO is an excellent Gen 5 SSD from Samsung. The build quality is excellent with attention to thermal considerations, the performance is very good, and with an appropriate heat sink the SSD should provide many years of reliable operation.

I picked this up to increase internal storage on a Playstation PS5 Pro. I knew going in that the PS5/PS5 Pro architecture is setup to run a gen 4 SSD and it wasn’t going to be able to fully utilize the speed available on a gen 5 drive but this is what I had so I used it. I picked up an inexpensive heat sink online to add to it and installed it in the bay. I had watched videos where some gen 5 SSDs had issues on startup in the PS5/PS5 Pro but happily that was not the case here. The console asked to format the new drive and did so in a matter of seconds. After formatting a screen popped up showing the read speed of the installed drive at 6375 MB/s, well above the minimum recommended speed of 5500 MB/s. In use, I have had no issues with game performance with this drive, every game I loaded has ran smoothly. If you’re looking to expand your storage this drive will work, you just won’t be able to take full advantage of the maximum speed of a gen 5 drive. With the price of gen 4 drives coming down there’s really no reason to run a gen 5 drive in a PS5 unless you catch it at a better price but at least you know it will work if you do.

I build my own computers, and my current setup is: Mobo - Asus ROG Strix Z790-E CPU - Intel i913900K Memory - 32g GSkill Trident z5 DDR5 Graphics - Nvidia RTX 4070 Case - Coolermaster H500M OS - Windows 11 Pro This most recent build had depleted me of most of my cash with many of the components being bought at the same time, and as such I carried into the build a frankenstein collection of HDDs for various purposes. I have a 6TB platter for media storage, a recently acquired Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVME drive for game storage, and a much older Samsung 970 Pro 512GB that I adopted for my operating system (OS) drive. It made the most sense to me because it was just my OS, the least important drive for my day to day computing. Or so I thought. Along comes the Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB NVME drive, and along with it the opportunity to use the previously dormant 5th gen M.2 slot in my motherboard that I had ignored when I initially put this build together. I hadn't really given the OS drive much consideration, and thought myself in good shape simply because I had a Samsung NVME drive already. I was completely unaware of how much of an improvement this would end up being. I am a huge Samsung acolyte- beyond the 970 pro and 990 Pro I have a media server running off of a 980 EVO, and a couple of older generation Samsung SSD's. They have been a trusted brand for me for almost a decade, and this new drive was a no brainer based on the consistent quality and value I had seen with them so far. As I had no desire at this time to do a fresh install, and for the cleanest and quickest swap, I bought an external enclosure for it with USB-C connectivity, and using cloning software the original drive was copied in about 10-15 minutes. I had it swapped in to the case a few minutes after that. Easy first boot, right to the Windows login, and zero issues with drivers or BIOS recognizing the new drive. After running it for a few days through some of the benchmarking paces and daily-driver activity, these were my main takeaways: Speed - this is Samsung's hallmark, and there were no missed expectations here. A few interesting observations worth noting: from startup - the timing from hitting the power button to Windows login did not really vary from my old gen 4 drive to the 9100. I was around 22 seconds on both, I thought it may show some improvement here. While it was harder to time in a practical manner, once logged into Windows, you absolutely could see Windows 'settle in' more quickly than before. Desktop and startup apps felt immediately engaged with little to no load lag. Another less-scientific but practical test was loading up games. I primarily game on the computer, and while my games normally load from the 990 Pro drive, I moved the gaming directory to the 9100 and tested it against the timing from the other drive. Using same games, I did notice a difference in game load time from hitting the load icon to the in-game start menu, and I definitely noticed an ascertainable difference in loading into the game from there, as well as loading into saved games. That was a faster and more streamlined experience. Other programs that I would typically keep on my OS drive, like Chrome/web browsing, Office and Adobe Suite products also loaded very quickly from launch. It is worth mentioning these real-time day-to-day examples of speedier transactions because that is where it feels the highest amount of value is with this drive. I benchmarked it and ran Crystaldisk as many others have, and have hit similar read (~14300) and write (~13400) marks - which were both enormously higher than the ~2700 read mark I was eking out of the 970 Pro - but I don't feel those data figures tell the story of what makes the drive so attractive. I also know that my benchmark scores likely have a higher ceiling than I received, but my cloning of the old drive and keeping the patchwork of different NVME and platter drives in my build likely handicapped those outcomes. If you are building new with a fresh OS install, and stay lean with internal NVME drives utilizing lanes on the motherboard, it will allow you to hit closer to that top-end capacity that is advertised. I just felt that it was incredibly cool that the whole operation of installing a new cloned version of my existing OS to me was less than a 20 minute exercise, and it picked up right where I left off, with the same docs, pics, files and settings that I didn't have to copy manually. The all-in experience of getting in and out of programs and software is the real noticable selling aspect to me, and was the real-life applications of the game-changing speed that I was anticipating when I got the drive Heat - this drive is known to run hot the more you stress it, but I don't think that will be a factor for most uers. I mentioned my case model above because while a little older, it is a roomy midsized case with two enormous 200mm intake fans, another 140mm intake on the rear, and three 120mm exhaust on the top pushing through a 360mm radiator for a Corsair iCue h150 AIO CPU cooler. This is a very cool box, in the literal sense. Utilizing the Samsung 9100 as an OS drive that I can also push gaming off of, it hasn't broken 42 degrees Celsius yet, and generally sits at 32 degrees C for daily driving. It did eclipse 60 degress during benchmarking, but I am not doing anything day-to-day that will exert it that hard, so this really isn't a terribly important factor to me. Your case/build and intended use may drive differernt results, but the 9100 Pro is a fairly cool customer for my use and needs. Use - this is a tough one, as it is a bit of a criticism, but I think a fair one. I really see this drive most optimally being used as an OS drive, and not much else. I really can't see any real advantage for use that makes sense, considering the premium you are paying for it. It makes a sincere difference in the actual day-to-day aspect of my computing, from loading in to loading anything launched directly from it. At 2TB I can easily dedicate a large portion to my favorite games, and still run a host of software, web browsers and general media with immediate and recognizable benefit, but if you were considering buying this for just a gaming drive, your money would be better spent on a Samsung 990 Pro, effectively doubling your storage at the same relative cost and still getting pretty great speed on loads and saves. I see folks mentioning using it in non-5th gen machines, external drives or even in Playstations...don't waste your time or money in these applications.....it is backwards compatible for gen 4 machines, but performs no better than a 4th gen drive and you gain none of the benefits this new drive architecture offers. I've been a longtime user of Samsung drives, and this first experience with their fifth generation product was absurdly beneficial for me. The 9100 Pro is a blazingly fast storage device, effectively quadrupling the speed from my old 970 Pro. I would highly recommend the 9100 Pro as the heart of your new build. There are many other Samsung drive products that I think make more financial sense as you expand your storage needs/capacity, but the 9100 Pro is a great investment as the foundational OS backbone drive.

Pros Spectacular bandwidth: Nearly doubling Gen 4 speeds—ideal for large file transfers, content creation, heavy-duty gaming, and AI workloads. Solid thermals: Operates cooler and more efficiently than other Gen 5 SSDs, even without a heatsink amazon.com +2 techradar.com +2 amazon.com +2 . Trusted brand ecosystem: Backed by Samsung Magician software—firmware updates, drives health diagnostics, encryption support amazon.com +2 tomshardware.com +2 semiconductor.samsung.com +2 . Strong endurance & warranty: 1200 TBW for 2 TB model with a 5‑year limited warranty tomshardware.com +15 servethehome.com +15 techpowerup.com +15 . ⚠️ Cons Pricey: Premium cost—Samsung 9100 Pro 4 TB at $449 ($0.12/GB) compared to ~ $0.06–$0.07/GB for Gen 4 drives samsung.com +15 tomshardware.com +15 amazon.com +15 . Marginal gaming benefit: Real-world gains in load times are modest versus high-end Gen 4 SSDs . Late entry: Released after competitors already saturated Gen 5, so lacks a distinct edge in one category . Heatsink needed for some setups: Bare version may require added cooling in compact builds or laptops.