Good as they are, Samsung's 850 series of SSDs has grown rather wizened. The line made its debut with the high-end 850 Pro all the way back in the summer of 2014, followed by the 850 EVO a few months later. But despite all the time that Samsung's competitors have had to try to close the gap, no drive has truly been able to displace the 850 EVO as the market's mainstream darling. With as little competitive pressure as Samsung has faced and with the SATA interface's ceiling on performance, there's been little reason for drastic change in the company's SATA SSD lineup.

But Samsung hasn't spent the last few years taking its advantage for granted. 3D NAND was still a young technology in 2014. The 850-series drives were powered by Samsung's second-generation, 32-layer V-NAND. The first-gen stuff never made it into a client drive. Samsung's stacks of flash have tripled in height since then'the company recently announced its forthcoming fifth-generation, 96-layer V-NAND. That flash may mark the end of line for Samsung's layer jenga. The company has hinted it will likely be seeking future gains through means other than adding more layers.