My bigass rant on the SSD discussion and samsung becoming 'over-rated' recently
I think the problem is that samsung had a generation or three where even the budget models were top-tier, and everyone expected that in every series.
850 had Evo and pro.
850 Pro was MLC (2 bit, 10 year warranty) while the evo was 3 bit (5 year)
That made it pretty simple to people: want longer warranty? Pro is for you
The Evo was a step up from previous gens, while the pro basically maxed out SATA III.
860 PRO, EVO and QVO are good examples with the QVO coming in a lot later and a reduced 3 year warranty
PRO? lifespan of the dinosaurs. EVO? for everyone. QVO? for those who want a lot of storage, but at the cost of lower lifespan if you write lots.
Unless you missed that QVO had that catch of reduced lifespan and warranty before buying, it was the only way to get bulk SSD storage cheap (and still is, really)
And honestly, who isn't impressed at how goddamn SMALL the QVO drives were inside?
Skip on to NVME and the 900 series got weird over time. This is when the pricings went weird, and the samsung name got diluted
The 960 evo was 48 layer TLC
the 970 Evo was 64 layer TLC
The 970 PRO (released before the 970 evo plus) remained a top tier, solid entry at least. Just... pricey. very pricey.
Being 64 layer MLC and not TLC, not shockingly it dominated a lot of other drives with longevity and certain use cases.
And then later came the 970 evo plus, which sounded like a premium, FASTER variant went in one huge jump to 96 layer TLC.
The problem is, that in many ways this new "plus" model was in fact a budget, slower replacement. That pissed a lot of people off.
The evo plus felt more like a QVO model, pretending to be an EVO.
Then the 980 series came along
980 Pro: 128 layer TLC, PCI-E 4.0.
Anandtech covers it well:
The first pro series to drop to TLC
In many ways, this drive could have easily been labeled the 980 EVO as a replacement for the 970 EVO Plus. Along with switching to TLC NAND, Samsung has cut the write endurance ratings in half to 0.3 DWPD and dropped the usable capacities down to the typical TLC/EVO levels of 250/500/1000 GB instead of 256/512/1024 GB. TLC means the 980 PRO now relies on SLC caching for its peak write speeds, and write performance will drop substantially if the SLC cache is ever filled. However, Samsung has offset this by configuring the 980 PRO to use substantially larger SLC cache sizes than their previous EVO drives, and this is what will give it the Pro name more than anything else
Samsung 980: Not EVO or QVO? just plain 980? 128 layer TLC, PCI-E 3.0, half the reads of the 980 pro instead of similar peak performance in previous generations.
Andandtech again covers the problem in one sentence
The SSD 980 is an entry-level NVMe SSD, using TLC NAND with a DRAMless controller. This makes it a new class of product for Samsung in the retail market, one it has never produced before. This kind of drive, with TLC and without DRAM, is already prevalent in the market from other turn-key solution vendors, and this type of drive has been quite popular with OEMs: it allows them to advertise a NVMe SSD without paying the cost of a high-end drive.
TL;DR: Go back and read, a-hole.
Samsung adjusted their names so the PRO drive should have been an evo, and the nameless 980 should have been a QVO.
Samsung used to have clear, simple distinctions between the tiers (MLC, TLC, warranty/lifespan) that is now out the window. Samsung never had entry level consumer drives, but now they do... with the names and prices of older premium models.
When the 980 pro comes off slower than the 970 pro in real world heavy use, samsung failed.
