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We reviewed this drive shortly after release and loved its strong all-around performance, excellent software (Samsung Magician) and support, and the fact that it ran consistently, efficiently, and cool, making it a well-rounded storage option for any build.The Samsung 990 Pro 2TB is the successor to the popular 980 Pro, using the same 2280 form factor, the in-house Samsung Pascal controller, and V7 3-bit 176-layer V-NAND TLC flash. It promises to be faster and more efficient than the 980, and it is. The drive includes 2GB of LPDDR4 DRAM, which acts as a buffer to handle data bursts during large-file transfers and helps keep performance more consistent. It comes in two flavors: one with a heatsink (MZ-V9P2T0CW) and one without (MZ-V9P2T0CW), and it also comes with a 5-year warranty.On the performance front, the 2TB 990 Pro delivered excellent random read performance, beating a host of other 2TB PCIe 4.0 x4 drives in our testing. It was also relatively efficient in the process and good for battery-powered devices like a laptop, while also reducing thermal output. Samsung lists sequential reads at 7,450 MBps and 6,900 MBps, with IOPS at 1.4M and 1.55M reads/writes, respectively. The read speeds essentially max out the PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. It also has an endurance rating of 1,200 TBW, which is average for the generation and capacity. You’ll be hard-pressed to pass that metric unless you’re transferring gigabytes upon gigabytes of data daily.
