The first PCIe Gen 5 SSDs from companies such as Seagate and Crucial hit the market almost two years ago, but Samsung has yet to introduce its own model. This will change in March with the introduction of the Samsung 9100 Pro series, the first PCIe Gen 5 SSD with NVMe 2.0 support that is ready for consumer use. They will be available in the M.2 form factor with capacities of 1 TB (starting at $199.99), 2 TB ($299.99), and 4 TB ($549.99), with or without heat sinks. The 8TB configuration, the first for Samsung NVMe SSDs, is scheduled for the second half of 2025.
The 9100 Pro’s theoretical maximum random read and write speeds of 2,200k and 2,600k IOPS are at least twice as fast as the latest generation Samsung 980 Pro, a PCIe Gen4 SSD. Our preliminary comparison of this SSD with the Seagate Firecuda 540 and Crucial T700 did not reveal any noticeable advantages in gaming; however, the difference may be more apparent in heavy computing workflows. Among other things, it would be nice to know that you have a future, at least until PCIe Gen 6 comes along.
However, the benefits may be more apparent when you’re talking about transferring large files, which videographers or software engineers working with large data sets may appreciate. Samsung claims that the 9100 Pro (built on V Nand TLC V8 with a dedicated controller) can achieve sequential read and write speeds of up to 14.8GB/s and 13.4GB/s, respectively. This is about twice as fast as the latest generation 980 Pro, and about 2-3 Gbps faster than the very first PCIe 5 SSDs.
