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Samsung’s M.2 drives are everywhere. They’re found in everything from off-the-shelf desktop PCs to custom-built gaming behemoths. Honestly, if you’ve touched a desktop computer in the last decade, you’ve probably used a Samsung M.2 drive. There’s a good reason for that. They’re quick, reliable, and forgettable. That’s a good thing for a storage device. Storage should lurk in the background, toiling in obscurity. If it rises to your notice, chances are it’s because something’s either very wrong, or very right. In the 1TB Samsung 860 Evo’s case, well, let’s just say it’s anything but forgettable.
Like all M.2 drives this little guy is about the size of a stick of gum, or a flash drive someone flattened with a hydraulic press. Point is, it’s small. It’s almost too small when you’re installing it in your computer it’s easy to lose in the shuffle of a messy desk. That didn’t happen during our review. We never misplaced it or briefly panicked because we thought maybe we lost this expensive piece of hardware. Not even for a second, promise.
Anyway, once you slot it into your PC and get it formatted, you might find yourself doing a double-take. A single terabyte might not seem like much these days, but there’s a disconnect between what 1TB of digital space actually feels like and what the Samsung 860 Evo looks like. It’s not a big hunk of steel that slots into a drive bay on the front-side of your PC. The Samsung 860 Evo occupies the space usually reserved for 256GB operating system drives, and once that extra terabyte shows up on your PC, it’s hard not to smile. It’s like opening the door to a phone booth and stepping into an aircraft hangar.
There’s a pleasant disconnect between what 1TB of space feels like and what the Samsung 860 Evo looks like.
During our tests we saw the 860 Evo hit a consistent read speed of 556 megabytes-per-second, and write speed of 515 MB/s. It’s not the quickest drive we’ve ever tested, not by a long shot — but it is the quickest 1TB desktop SSD we’ve ever tested, if only just.
It beat out the two runners-up, the WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB SSD, and the SanDisk Ultra 3D NAND 1TB SSD by a few megabytes-per-second. The WD Blue hit a read speed of 540 MB/s and a write speed of 511 MB/s, while the SanDisk Ultra hit 539 MB/s and 510 MB/s.
The important thing to note about the Samsung 860 Evo’s competitors is their respective size. Both the WD Blue and SanDisk Ultra we tested were 2.5-inch drives, the kind that slot into the front-side of your desktop. That means they’re not quite as convenient, despite being in the same price range as the 1TB Samsung Evo, which will set you back about $330. The 1TB WD Blue runs about $286, and the 1TB SanDisk Ultra starts at about $280. So, while you could save some cash going with one of these other drives, they’re nowhere near as compact and convenient as the 1TB Samsung 860 Evo.
Whether you’re upgrading an existing PC, or building one from scratch, the $330 Samsung 860 Evo M.2 1TB is an excellent choice. It is a bit expensive, but keep in mind what you’re getting — a terabyte of storage space, and enough speed that it’s never going to hold you back in everyday use. If you bought one today, it’d be the most future-proof component in your PC for several years at least.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.