The Samsung 9100 Pro is an SSD that I’ve often used as a baseline comparison in my reviews of different SSDs throughout this year. It’s a hard SSD to beat, both in speed and a price-to-performance ratio, and the irony is Samsung only just sent over a unit for me to officially (and finally review).
What Am I Looking At?
Samsung was pretty generous with the unit they sent over – the Korean tech giant sent us its 8TB module, the highest capacity available for the 9100 Pro. Not only that, it’s also the model that comes with the heatsink pre-installed on it, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your use case.
What’s Good About It?
The 9100 Pro sets itself apart from the competition, in that it’s currently Samsung’s latest PCIe 5.0 SSD to use its new 5nm Presto controller, which better manages energy efficiency. Adding on to that, the NAND Flash is also Samsung’s 236-layer 3D TLC V-NAND, which are used in its 990 EVO Plus and 990 Pro models.
Performance-wise, my 8TB unit has average sequential read and write speeds of 14,800MB/s and 13,400MB/s, respectively. Speeds that remain consistent throughout the testing period.
What’s the Catch?
Whether you’re planning on making it your primary or secondary storage, this choice is going to be a determining factor for whether you go for the model with the heatsink, or without. Given that my unit comes prefixed with Samsung’s heatsink, there’s a bit of tinkering involved, and by that, I mean removing the plate beneath one of the PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, because it just wouldn’t fit.
I bring this up because, if you’re getting the model with the heatsink on, you can’t remove the heatsink without voiding the warranty of the SSD.
Then there’s the very obvious factor: its price tag. For 8TB worth of PCIe Gen5 storage, you’re paying RM4,269. For half the storage capacity, you’re paying RM2,600 on average, which I think should be more than plenty. Unless, of course, you’re something of a size queen and ultimately, a believer in the whole “the more, the better” philosophy.
Should I Buy It?
Should you buy the 8TB SKU? Critically, no. Not unless you’re building a PC and you’ve got limited PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, or as I’ve pointed out, you’re a bit of a size queen. Likewise, having 8TB of storage in your PS5 Pro is overkill and unnecessary, given that the console is limited to PCIe Gen4 speeds anyway.
Personally, getting the 4TB 9100 Pro option is more than plenty, and that’ll save you more than RM1,500 to spend on other components.
