Samsung 870 EVO internal SSD 1 TB, 2.5" SATA III, 560/530 MB/s

The SATA III interface has a theoretical bandwidth of 6 Gb/s, which works out to roughly 600 MB/s in practice. Reads of up to 560 MB/s and writes of up to 530 MB/s use almost all of it. Compared with a spinning hard drive the difference is obvious straight away: the computer boots in seconds and files open without delay.

The drive uses the standard 2.5-inch form factor that fits the drive bays of most laptops and the 2.5″ bays of desktop PCs. Because the interface is SATA, it connects with the same cable or connector as the old hard drive. That lets you give an older computer a new lease of life without replacing the motherboard or other hardware.

One terabyte holds the operating system, work applications, documents, photos and a good number of games. In a desktop, the 870 EVO also works as a second drive next to an NVMe system disk, for a game library or photo archive that needs quicker access than a spinning disk can give.

The drive weighs 57 g and has no moving parts. That means no noise or vibration, and it copes with knocks better than a hard drive with spinning platters, which matters most in a laptop that is carried around and moved while switched on.

Owners of an older laptop or desktop who want to swap the hard drive for a fast SSD without changing other components. Desktop users who need a large, fast second drive alongside an NVMe disk. Anyone whose computer has a free 2.5″ SATA bay.