Introduction

Samsung is one of the largest technology companies in the world. They make pretty much every electronic product you can think of.

Being a leader in DRAM and flash memory production, it comes as no surprise that they are also a player in the SSD business. They are actually one of the biggest players in terms of volume because their drives are used in Sony and Apple products.

Samsung's current 840 Series products are extremely popular with users, and we were extremely impressed with the 840 Pro when we reviewed it earlier this year.

The Samsung 840 Non-Pro SSD we are reviewing today is not based on a SandForce or Marvell controller, but, instead, on Samsung's own creation, the Samsung MDX (S4LN021X01-8030), which is a triple-core ARM microprocessor. It's the same controller used on the faster 840 Pro; the main difference between both is that the 840 Pro uses MLC flash chips (2 bits per cell) whereas the non-Pro version uses TLC chips (3 bits per cell).

As the name suggests, TLC stores three bits per cell which increases its density compared to MLC (two bits per cell) and SLC (one bit per cell). This means that the price per GB of flash storage will go down significantly, which enables new SSDs to be built at unprecedented price levels. On the other hand, TLC flash is slower and comes with shorter endurance too, which means firmware has to be running at its best to avoid any potential issues.