The big picture: Samsung's new 970 EVO Plus is getting close to reaching the theoretical limits of the PCIe 3.0 M.2 interface. It's a nice feather in Samsung's cap but arguably an even more impressive feat for SSDs as a category, especially when you consider where the technology was just a decade ago.

Samsung on Tuesday launched its latest NVMe-based solid state drive, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. It’s built on the M.2 (2280) form factor and uses the latest fifth-generation V-NAND technology with optimized firmware to push performance to new heights.

The new drive delivers sequential read and write speeds of up to 3,500 MB/s and 3,300 MB/s, respectively, besting the standard 970 EVO’s 3,500 MB/s / 2,500 MB/s capabilities. Random read and write speeds (QD32), meanwhile, check in at an impressive 620,000 IOPS and 560,000 IOPS, respectively. Again, last year’s model was rated at 500,000 IOPS read and 480,000 IOPS write.

Samsung’s latest carries a five-year limited warranty or up to 1,200 terabytes written, whichever comes first.

PCGamesN in its review said the 970 EVO Plus is “pretty much as good as it gets” while PC Perspective’s testing showed an improvement – sometimes huge – over the original 970 EVO.

The 970 EVO Plus is offered in capacities of 250GB, 500GB and 1TB with MSRPs of $89.99, $129.99 and $249.99, respectively. Samsung says they’re available to purchase from today although I’ve had no luck finding them as of writing.

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A 2TB drive is also on the way in April, we’re told, at an unspecified MSRP.

 

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