Samsung has announced its fastest consumer SSD to date, the 9100 Pro. The drive comes with some of the fastest PCIe Gen 5.0 transfer speeds, essentially making it useful for power users, gamers, and professionals who need high-speed storage for demanding workloads.
According to the company, the 9100 Pro offers sequential read speeds of up to 14,800MB/s sequential read speeds and 13,400MB sequential write speeds making it almost twice as fast as its predecessor, the 990 Pro. This makes it the fastest PCIe Gen 5 consumer SSD on the market. The only other drive that comes close is the Crucial T705 which offers read and write speeds of up to 14,500MB/s and 12,700MB/s respectively.
The 9100 PRO SSD will be available next month starting at $200 for the base 1TB model. Samsung will also offer higher capacities including 2TB ($300) and 4TB ($550) while an 8TB capacity model is also in the pipeline which is expected to launch in the second half of 2025.
Beyond raw speeds, Samsung states that the 9100 Pro features an “advanced heat management system” which is essentially a heatsink since PCIe 5.0 SSDs tend to generate significant heat. The 1TB to 4TB models come with an 8.8mm-thick heatsink, while the 8TB variant includes a larger 11.25mm heatsink. The optional heatsink bumps up the price of the 9100 Pro by $20, which is not too bad.
Despite the impressive speeds, adoption of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs remains relatively low. PCIe Gen 4 and even Gen 3 drives already provide sufficient and stable performance for most everyday tasks, including high-resolution gaming. Additionally, not all motherboards support PCIe Gen 5 M.2 SSDs—compatibility is mostly limited to newer Intel and AMD platforms.
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.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.