Samsung 9100 Pro 1TB SSD Drops to $265, Narrowing Its Price Gap With the 990 Pro

The 9100 Pro is an M.2 2280 NVMe drive with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. Samsung rates it for up to 14,700 MB/s sequential reads and up to 13,300 MB/s sequential writes, with random performance of up to 1,850K read and 2,600K write IOPS. The 990 Pro is rated at up to 7,450 MB/s. Samsung says the 9100 Pro's 5nm controller improves power efficiency by up to 49 percent compared with the 990 Pro, and the drive includes hardware encryption and the company's Magician software for updates and drive health monitoring.

TechRadar awarded the drive 4.5 stars in its review, citing "best-in-class sequential read and write performance" and "fantastic random read and write speeds," along with what it described as the fastest write speeds the publication has tested. The outlet said it continued testing the drive on a range of other motherboards and processors after the review and was able to reach the sequential read speeds Samsung advertises. It recommends the 9100 Pro for professionals and creators running heavy workloads such as video editing, and calls it an easy pick over the 990 Pro for anyone whose system can use it.

The drive requires a PCIe 5.0 M.2 motherboard and what TechRadar describes as reliable heatsinks to prevent thermal throttling. Machines limited to PCIe 4.0 or slower will not reach the advertised top speeds, which the publication lists as the main reason to skip the drive.

On price, TechRadar notes that $265 is not the lowest the 9100 Pro has ever sold for, particularly after component costs began to rise, but that it falls within the range of sale prices the outlet regularly sees. The $340 list price has been common, according to the report, which argues the current discount is worth taking and that the 9100 Pro offers better value than the 990 Pro for buyers who already own a Gen5 motherboard.