The first PCIe Gen 5 SSDs from companies like Seagate and Crucial have been making waves in the market for nearly two years now. However, Samsung has remained out of the spotlight until now. This March, the tech giant will introduce the Samsung 9100 Pro series, its inaugural consumer-ready PCIe Gen 5 SSD utilizing NVMe 2.0 technology. Initially, the series will offer capacities of 1TB (starting at $199.99), 2TB ($299.99), and 4TB ($549.99) in an M.2 form factor, available both with and without heatsinks. Additionally, an 8TB model, marking a first for Samsung’s NVMe SSDs, is expected to launch in the second half of 2025.
When it comes to performance, the 9100 Pro boasts impressive theoretical maximum random read and write speeds of 2,200K and 2,600K input-output operations per second (IOPS), respectively—at least double the speed of its predecessor, the Samsung 980 Pro, a PCIe Gen 4 SSD. Our initial comparisons with Seagate’s Firecuda 540 and Crucial’s T700 indicated that there were no significant advantages for PC gaming. However, users engaged in more demanding computing tasks may notice a difference. At the very least, this SSD ensures you are future-proofed, at least until PCIe Gen 6 arrives.
The benefits of the Samsung 9100 Pro are expected to shine during large-volume file transfers, a feature that videographers and software engineers dealing with large datasets will surely appreciate. According to Samsung, the 9100 Pro, built with its V Nand TLC V8 technology and a custom controller, can achieve sequential read and write speeds of up to 14.8GBps and 13.4GBps, respectively. This performance is approximately double that of the previous generation 980 Pro and surpasses the earliest PCIe 5 SSDs by about 2-3GBps per second.
