Samsung's 970 EVO has always been the fastest of the low-priced NVMe SSDs, and the company's new 970 EVO Plus, announced Tuesday, further cements that position. Samsung claims up to a 57 percent increase in performance for the Plus over the older 970 EVO. I didn't see quite that, but sustained writes when the drive was using its SLC cache increased by 10 percent, and jumped by a very welcome 42 percent when writing to the main body of TLC NAND.

Note that the 1TB version will be the first out the gate. The 2TB version in the photos will be available later. 

Design and specs

The 970 EVO Plus is basically the same drive as the 970 Evo, using the same 64-layer stacked TLC (Triple Level Cell/3-bit) NAND and Phoenix controller with improved firmware. Note that Samsung refers to the NAND not as TLC, but as 3-bit MLC V-NAND (vertical). MLC (Multi-Level Cell) was a poorly conceived moniker that became associated strictly with 2-bit NAND, but obviously can be applied to any type of NAND that stores more than one bit per cell. 

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