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Samsung 830 thoughts after a few days

M

mpaquette

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 15, 2010
136
65
Columbia, SC
I've been using my new Samsung 830 in my early 2011 MBP pro for a few days now. The good: much faster than the stock Apple drive, no lockups or random reboots. The bad: flaky Lion re-install (recovery console wouldn't work), much worse battery life than with the stock HD.

At this point, I think I'm going back to the stock HD. The speed is nice, but the shortened battery life is a big problem. Maybe the Samsung is better suited to a desktop system vs. a laptop.
 
I recall reading the power usage was higher than the 470 series; but this is the first I've heard of it being noticeable, especially compared to the stock drive.

Anyway, what size and how much do you want for it?
 
I know there have been a few recent software updates so before just giving up on it, i would make sure everything is up to date.

You have a great SSD there and returning it after a few days seems fairly quick to do so.
 
The interesting thing though is that if you look at the power consumption specs as listed on Newegg, it doesn't look bad at all. Compared to my old Kingston SSDNow V+, I was hoping the newer drives like Samsung 830 wouldn't impact the battery life in any dramatic way. :(
 
thatoneguy82 said:
I've always wondered why the Samsung SSD is more expensive than other brands. Is it just the name?
Click to expand...

It's partly the name, but mostly it's because the 830 is ridiculously thin at 7mm compared to other standard 9.5mm drives.
 
Jaro65 said:
The interesting thing though is that if you look at the power consumption specs as listed on Newegg, it doesn't look bad at all. Compared to my old Kingston SSDNow V+, I was hoping the newer drives like Samsung 830 wouldn't impact the battery life in any dramatic way. :(
Click to expand...

Read the review on Anandtech. It appears that it likes power. I wish I would have read that before I made the purchase.
 
mpaquette said:
Read the review on Anandtech. It appears that it likes power. I wish I would have read that before I made the purchase.
Click to expand...

That's strange. I just installed the 128gb 830 in my early 2011 13'' and if anything, I've noticed better battery life compared to the stock drive. Of course, this perhaps could be due to the clean install of Lion vs my previous SL -> Lion upgrade mess. I don't have a lot of experience with SSDs but so far I have been thrilled with this drive. It's insanely fast and I've run into no issues.

Anandtech's review did show high power usage, but the Storage Review one shows very low power consumption. I'm not really sure what's going on. Perhaps try updating the firmware and see if that helps? Oh, that does bring me to my one issue with the drive: it is not updatable on Mac OS. Even Samsung's bootable ISO will not work. Bootcamp should work, but one of the reasons I did go Samsung was because I was under the impression that their bootable firmware updater would work on OSX.
 
I changed my OWC 120g Mercury extreme Pro 6G with the 256g Samsung 830 and battery have been a lot better than with the OWC. I upgraded the firmware before installing it. And I also notice some faster performance with the samsung compared to the OWC.
 
had mine for about a month. update it via bootcamp partition. it seems to actually give me slightly better battery life. so far, i have really been enjoying the speed
 
mpaquette said:
I've been using my new Samsung 830 in my early 2011 MBP pro for a few days now. The good: much faster than the stock Apple drive, no lockups or random reboots. The bad: flaky Lion re-install (recovery console wouldn't work), much worse battery life than with the stock HD.

At this point, I think I'm going back to the stock HD. The speed is nice, but the shortened battery life is a big problem. Maybe the Samsung is better suited to a desktop system vs. a laptop.
Click to expand...

What do you mean by flaky Lion re-install? The recovery console is stored in the MBP firmware, so it shouldn't have anything to do with your HDD/SSD. Simply press Command + R on startup to access this menu.

As for your battery life - are you quoting what Lion tells you? Or actual real-world usage of your computer? I've noticed Lion takes a bit to correctly gauge the battery life meter, but after a few days it should be OK.

I'm able to get pretty decent battery life on my late-2011 15" MBP with the Samsung 830. Usually I can get at least 5 hours of usage, and the battery life is definitely better than the stock 7200rpm HDD that i was using previously. Perhaps something else is going on - what do you do on your machine? What browser do you use?

Also, I suggest reading the "official" Samsung 830 thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1286166/
 
Upon their release I bought a 512 GB Samsung 830, installed it in my 15" mid 2010 MBP with 10.6.8. Performance, battery life, and stability has been terrific. No bugs or problems at all. Installtion was fast & easy. I'm very satisfied.
 
Acejam2k said:
What do you mean by flaky Lion re-install? The recovery console is stored in the MBP firmware, so it shouldn't have anything to do with your HDD/SSD. Simply press Command + R on startup to access this menu.

As for your battery life - are you quoting what Lion tells you? Or actual real-world usage of your computer? I've noticed Lion takes a bit to correctly gauge the battery life meter, but after a few days it should be OK.

Also, I suggest reading the "official" Samsung 830 thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1286166/
Click to expand...

Meaning that Lion wouldn't re-install. Command+R worked in bringing up the recovery console, I was able to format the SSD, clicked on the install Lion option, then nothing. Just a spinning wheel. Posted about it here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1318481/

Regarding battery life, I'm going by what Lion tells me. That's why I said that I would probably give it a few more days and see if things settle back to normal.

Thanks for the link to the 830 thread. I've been following it and posted in it.
 
thatoneguy82 said:
I've always wondered why the Samsung SSD is more expensive than other brands. Is it just the name?
Click to expand...

While others compete in price and speed, Samsung concentrates on reliability. Samsung SSDs are overall the most reliable and right now they are the only brand that uses in-house controllers in all SSDs.
 
Trim?

hi guys, my first post here, yeah!

so im considering to buy a 256gb samsung ssd, for my mbp 2011, the question is, should i use this Trim enabler or not, and maybe the energy problems are because of that Trim stuff? well I'm not a techy guy, any thoughts?

cheers
L
 
LeonHH said:
hi guys, my first post here, yeah!

so im considering to buy a 256gb samsung ssd, for my mbp 2011, the question is, should i use this Trim enabler or not, and maybe the energy problems are because of that Trim stuff? well I'm not a techy guy, any thoughts?

cheers
L
Click to expand...

Samsung 830 has a pretty effective garbage collection so you don't really need TRIM.
 
I don't believe for one second that the battery life decreases after installing ANY SSD. I have 2 in mine, and I never noticed any decrease or increase in battery life. There is no moving part and you don't need the sudden motion sensor, plus you don't have to put the disk to sleep as if it were a regular HDD. regardless of it being a samsung or not, I doubt what's causing your battery life to drain faster is caused by your SSD.
 
After another couple of days, I think I jumped the gun declaring battery life was worse. Things really seem to have improved. No idea why. Overall I'm pleased with the 830.
 
I would due this to its "extra" chip. 830 series seems to have two chips instead of one in 430 series, which would make the disk more stable but also consume more power.
 
Hellhammer said:
While others compete in price and speed, Samsung concentrates on reliability. Samsung SSDs are overall the most reliable and right now they are the only brand that uses in-house controllers in all SSDs.
Click to expand...

Except for Intel of course ;)
 
alphaod said:
Except for Intel of course ;)
Click to expand...

Not sure which point you were referring to - so I'll address both. Intel has definitely had their fair share of SSD issues (8MB cache bug), but they've also released some *very* reliable models, such as the X25-M G2. As to the other point, the Intel 510 uses a Marvell controller, which I wouldn't exactly call "in-house".
 
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