The 840 Pro is very fast, and should be reliable (the previous model (830) is), and has very low idle power consumption so are perfect for laptops.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6328/sams ... 6gb-review

Various other reviews are out there now the NDA has been lifted.

Price TBC, availability ~22 October.

There is the non-pro-840 model coming out as well, which is going to be their budget model. It uses 3-bits per cell data storage so its reliability is going to be a concern until proven otherwise, it will have a lower cost but also lower performance, more info soon when reviews of this model appear, AnandTech have a sample that they are reviewing at the moment, so you wont have to wait long.

Hopefully the 830 model will drop further in price as well.

NOTE: The power usage mentioned on the first page of the review is "for the controller only" not the whole SSD, the real power consumption is on the last page.


Andy

Idle consumption is a radical leap from its predecessor:



There's been talk of 3 bit flash for some time - once the technology is sorted it may well bring the death of the platter drive.

3-bit has less read/write endurance than 2-bit MLC which means more spare area has to be reserved to maintain a reasonable lifetime. At some point there won't be a gain in going further down the lithography curve for Flash. Whether it's at a cost effective 512GB or 4TB is unknown to me. Hopefully, the next great thing in solid state storage (perhaps memristor based) will kick in by then.

The 840 Pro definately kicks some butt.

I don't think you can draw that conclusion from that chart. The 256GB 840 Pro is only 0.07W lower than the 830. The 512GB 830 is way out of whack, but they don't list an 840 Pro to compare. Their active power consumption tests do show a more significant improvement for the 840 Pro though.