950 pro review: The Samsung 950 Pro PCIe SSD Review (256GB and 512GB)

Samsung 950 Pro SSD Review — Tom’s Hardware

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NVMe in the M.2 form factor is finally a reality for desktop enthusiasts. Retailers begin selling Samsung’s 950 Pro today, and we already have three drives in-hand.

Early Verdict

The Samsung 950 Pro sets a new bar for high performance storage and brings it to market at a low price point. Samsung didn’t need to lean on power hungry enterprise controllers or ridiculous adapters + cables either to enable NVMe technology in desktops. The number of NVMe capable notebooks is very small but eventually the 950 Pro will work as an upgrade to lower quality m.2 SSDs shipping in OEM systems. The m.2 form factor is elegant, powerful, and the right price for Z97, X99 and Z170 motherboard owners.

Pros

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The 950 Pro delivers class leading performance at a good price point, thermal envelope and low power consumption. Advanced software features seal the deal but we’re still waiting to see Rapid Mode for this product.

Cons

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The 950 Pro needs a 1TB model to satisfy power users and a 2TB model for gamers with large Steam / Origin libraries. Magician Software with Windows 10 support is lacking at this time but Samsung is working on it.

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Introduction

Samsung continues to lead the SSD market. Its new 950 Pro delivers blistering performance in an elegant package. This beauty is a beast, but you might be surprised to learn that it’s also affordable.

Today marks an important milestone in storage history. The Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol will replace AHCI across a large number of devices, improving the user experience as it reduces latency. This is all thanks to the first product designed specifically for client use, Samsung’s 950 Pro.

For years, storage enthusiasts watched other subsystems enjoy massive performance increases at the hands of new technology and advanced manufacturing. Hard drives, and even SSDs, just couldn’t scale at the same pace as CPUs, RAM or GPUs. AHCI-enabled solid-state drives did shrink the gap, but quickly became limited by legacy interfaces designed for mechanical disks.

NVMe changes the rules. Recently, Intel divulged that the protocol was designed for 3D XPoint. But that didn’t stop SSD manufacturers from adapting it to more traditional flash-based storage products. Intel already introduced a high-end NVMe-based drive to the client segment by utilizing an expensive and power-hungry controller from its data center portfolio. But the 950 Pro is different. Its M.2 form factor facilitates lower power consumption than Intel’s SSD 750, which is limited to the 2.5″ and add-in card form factors due to a 12V requirement. Enterprise-class technology like that often finds its way onto the desktop, even though it can be clumsy. For instance, many data center devices need more air flow. When you bring them over to enthusiast PCs, it becomes necessary to augment your cooling and cope with the resulting noise.

The 950 Pro also differs from the SM951 and SM951-NVMe. This new model is a retail product, and it comes with tools developed by Samsung to improve your user experience. Samsung will make the drivers readily available, along with the company’s SSD toolbox software called Magician. The company also has an in-house cloning tool you’ll get access to. In comparison, the SM951s are designed for OEM customers, and gray market products usually lack official drivers and software. Many enthusiasts have purchased the SM951-NVMe, only to fall back on Microsoft’s built-in drivers. Without the NVMe software that HP recently published , you leave roughly 30% of the SM951-NVMe’s random performance tied up in the driver stack. Not every user knows to jump through those hoops. Retail products like the 950 Pro simplify support greatly.

Technical Specifications

Samsung 950 Pro 256GB

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The 950 Pro is available in two capacities: 256 and 512GB. Samsung tells us that a 1TB model will launch early in 2016, and it’ll employ Samsung’s 48-layer MLC V-NAND, which stacks more memory cells without decreasing the number of usable dies per wafer. The two 950 Pros introduced today use Samsung’s 32-layer MLC V-NAND. The 48-layer stuff won’t enter production until later this year.

At the 950 Pro’s heart is a Samsung UBX controller, the same one found on the SM951 and SM951-NVMe. This is Samsung’s catch-all PCIe-to-NAND flash controller for 2015, it seems. An enterprise-oriented version with host power-fail protection is expected later this year as well, and it’ll be called the SM953 . The UBX controller is manufactured on a 32nm node and consists of three ARM Cortex-R4 cores running at 500MHz. The controller can address eight channels with eight-way interleaving. Error correction comes in the form of BCH, so we don’t expect Samsung to utilize three-bit-per-cell flash without heavy modifications.

Expect the 512GB 950 Pro to be faster than the 256GB model, delivering up to 2500 MB/s sequential read and 1500 MB/s sequential writes. Its random performance specs are also impressive. At a queue depth of one, random reads can hit up to 12,000 IOPS according to Samsung. Those sequential numbers come from an enterprise-class workload, so you shouldn’t expect to see 2.5 GB/s on the desktop. Still, the SSD is very, very fast.

The 950 Pros should also support AES 256-bit FDE with eDrive and TCG Opal. This wasn’t enabled on our review sample; however, retail drives are expected to receive a firmware update either before release or not long after. AES encryption is not enabled on the SM951 either, but we’ve yet to hear anyone complain about the omission.

Pricing

Samsung’s 950 Pro 256GB has an MSRP of $200. The 512GB model should sell for $350. The obvious comparison to the 950 Pro is Intel’s SSD 750 400GB. Newegg currently has that drive priced at $360, and we have both of Intel’s client-oriented NVMe products in today’s charts for performance comparisons.

Warranty

The 950 Pros include five-year warranties limited by the total amount of data written to the drive. Samsung’s 256GB version is capped at 200 terabytes written (TBW) and the 512GB drive doubles that to 400 TBW. Both 950 Pros increase the TBW limit over the 850 Pro by 50 TBW (256GB comparison) and 100 TBW (512GB comparison).

Accessories

Magician software to enable Rapid Mode was not available in time for our review. However, Samsung says it’ll release the utility soon. The company also has its own drive cloning software for retail-branded SSDs. It will be interesting to see how Samsung handles booting from the NVMe driver on a cloned operating system. You may need to fiddle with BIOS settings and the original operating system to get a smooth transition. This would include installing an NVMe driver in Windows 7. The Microsoft driver built into Windows 8.x and Windows 10 is a bit easier.

Software tools aside, the 950 Pro only ships with the M.2 2280 form factor drive and two Samsung SSD stickers for the outside of your notebook or desktop PC.

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Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom’s Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.

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950 Pro review: Samsung’s first PCIe M.2 NVMe SSD is an absolute monster

Tech —

Samsung focuses on bleeding-edge performance instead of the budget SSD market.

Orestis Bastounis
— Oct 22, 2015 2:20 pm UTC

Orestis Bastounis

The 950 Pro isn’t Samsung’s first consumer M.2 SSD, or even the company’s first PCIe M.2 drive. It is, however, Samsung’s first consumer M.2 and NVMe drive that uses the full performance of four PCIe 3.0 lanes. It is also an upgrade from its predecessor, the SM951, in that it uses 3D V-NAND rather than planar NAND.

Somewhat disappointingly, the 950 Pro comes in only two capacities for now: 256GB or 512GB, with a 1TB model promised for next year. Samsung is resolute in only producing single-sided M.2 devices to keep the drive’s thickness to a minimum, so the 1TB drive will have to wait until 48-layer 3rd-generation V-NAND is available. Thankfully, no 128GB model will be sold, indicating that 128GB SSDs may be on their way out.

UK pricing is pegged at £150 for the 256GB model and £270 for 512GB; in the US, it’s $200 and $350, respectively. As always, expect some variation between retailers with these prices, and in these early days, prices may be slightly higher than what Samsung is quoting. We’re told that the 950 Pro will hit retailers today; we’ll update this story with some links when they first appear.

Updated: Scan now has the 512GB 950 Pro in the UK—but they’re charging a rather shocking £320 for it, which is well over the RRP. In the US, Newegg has the 512GB drive at $350.

If you just want the 950 Pro benchmarks, you can skip the following section. If you want a bit of background on the state of the SSD market, and why Samsung seems to be absolutely dominating at the moment, read on!

The state of Samsung

Samsung is the world’s largest producer of NAND flash memory, and is (still) the only firm to sell SSDs with a controller and firmware developed in-house, using NAND flash memory manufactured at its own fabrication plants.

Working on everything in-house has already paid dividends for Samsung. With the 850 Pro, released last year, the company was first to bring 3D flash memory technology to market, which it calls V-NAND. Put simply, with 3D NAND flash memory, the memory cells are stacked in three dimensions, with a far greater number of connections between them than is possible with a 2D planar arrangement. One of its biggest potential advantages is greater densities from a single chip, but also it seems Samsung hasn’t been forced to use ever smaller process nodes like its competitors. The 850 Pro is based off 40nm NAND flash memory, while other firms are forced into using smaller 20nm, 19nm, and 16nm chips to increase densities.

In response to Samsung’s performance in the solid-state storage arena, the rest of the industry is consolidating its forces. Intel has strengthened its relationship with Micron, announcing its own 48-layer 3D flash memory, and what appears to be a very interesting technology called 3D XPoint. Said to be non-volatile and 1,000 times faster than NAND, while still offering a higher density than DRAM, Intel is describing 3D XPoint as a whole new category of memory, due to ship next year. But as of now, few concrete details are known about 3D XPoint products.

Separately, Toshiba—another large producer of NAND flash memory—is slowly moving towards the same route of vertical production. It now owns OCZ Storage Solutions, and as seen with the recent entry-level OCZ Trion 100 SSD, which uses a Toshiba-designed TC58 controller, is moving towards an SSD made entirely in-house. They’re not quite there yet though, particularly since OCZ still operates relatively independently of Toshiba.

Samsung’s current flagship 2.5-inch SATA SSD, the 850 Pro, is probably the most advanced SATA drive on the market. With 32-layer V-NAND, read and write performance that hovers around 550MB/sec, a 10-year warranty, and capacities that go up to 2TB (and a 4TB model due out next year) it’s a very impressive device. But all this technology doesn’t come cheap: the 850 Pro is one of the most expensive 2.5-inch SSDs on the market.

A more budget-friendly drive, the 850 Evo, aims for a more mainstream price point. It likewise uses V-NAND, but with 3-bit MLC flash memory for cost reduction and a large SLC cache, rather than 2-bit MLC as with the 850 Pro.

Herein lies a problem for Samsung. Other firms are competing with ever-cheaper products at entry-level prices. Crucial (a subsidiary of Micron) released the MX100 last year, which it has now followed up with the BX100 and MX200 drives, all of which cost less than Samsung’s drives, and for most people are absolutely sufficient. There’s a chance that such a race to the bottom could see Samsung’s market share slowly eaten away by ever-cheaper drives.

While Samsung has the advantage on paper, it’s difficult to argue that the performance advantage of the 850 Pro is worth the cost; in a blind test, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the 850 Pro and another cheaper SSD. Even in synthetic benchmarks, the gap between the 850 Pro and other drives isn’t enormous.

You might think that Samsung’s next step would be to produce a cheaper drive, to compete with the Crucial and co.—but no, it’s quite the opposite: With the 950 Pro, announced today, Samsung is doubling down on performance. I think that’s our cue to get back to the review.

Too many TLAs

The new 950 Pro occupies a slightly odd space in the company’s overall SSD lineup. Samsung’s alternative consumer M.2 SSD, the 850 Evo M.2, is not in the same performance category as the 950 Pro. M.2 SSDs can use either the PCIe bus or SATA bus, and the 850 Evo is a SATA 6Gbps drive—it’s no faster than a normal 2. 5-inch SSD. Its main advantage is the smaller M.2 card form factor, which is of benefit in NUCs, Mini-ITX builds, or in ultra-thin laptops.

Spiritually, the 950 Pro is much closer to the NVMe variant of the four-lane PCIe SM951, which has on the market since earlier this year. Samsung originally intended for the SM951 to be an OEM-only product, included with retail PCs. Up until the launch of the 950 Pro, though, it was the best performing M.2 SSD on the market—and so, rather understandly, retailers have been selling them separately to PC building types. Being an OEM drive, the SM951 has a shorter warranty period, fewer support options from Samsung, and will not work with their Magician SSD management software.

With the launch of Skylake and the Z170 chipset, four-lane PCIe 3.0 M.2 storage is now available in a mainstream computing platform (assuming you categorise Haswell-E and X99 as intended for servers or workstations). Now is the perfect time for Samsung to launch a consumer PCIe M. 2 SSD that makes use of this available performance, and the company has done just this with the 950 Pro.

The drive itself comes in the 80mm-long 2280 format. Every Z170 motherboard we’ve seen supports M.2 devices of this size, but the larger 110mm 22110 size is not universally supported. As with (we presume) all M.2 SSDs, it uses an M-key connector, which is mandatory for four-lane PCIe speeds. (For more information about the M.2 connector and its «keys,» read our in-depth explainer.)

Notably, Samsung has opted to not bundle a PCIe adaptor card with the drive, something Kingston does with its Predator Hyper X M.2. While that would make the 950 Pro usable in any desktop computer right out of the box, it would mean higher pricing and more packaging.

The 950 Pro uses a 500MHz triple-core «UBX» controller, a small upgrade from the 400MHz «MEX» controller in the 850 Pro. Both capacities have 512MB of LPDDR3 memory (an upgrade from LPDDR2 in the 850 Pro) and both support the NVMe 1. 1 protocol. AES 256-bit encryption is supported with TCG Opal and eDrive support promised, but only in a future firmware update.

The 950 Pro also has a technology called Dynamic Thermal Throttling, or DTT. While temperatures are not a particular concern for desktops, inside cramped smaller form factors they can be. Additional heat generated by a tiny M.2 storage device could cause problems. DTT is described by Samsung as a method for “controlling the temperature of the device to reduce overheating and maintain a high level of sustained performance.” There isn’t much additional info yet though, and this is not something we were able to test.

While the 850 Pro launched with an astonishing 10-year warranty, the 950 Pro only carries five years. But the quoted TBW (total bytes written) is higher on the 950 Pro than on the 850 Pro, with 200TB for the 256GB model and 400TB for the 512GB. This is a 33 percent increase over the 150TB offered by the 256GB 850 Pro and 300TB with the 512GB variant, which works out at roughly 109GB of writes per day for the 256GB model, and 218GB per day for the 512GB model, over a five year period. In nearly all «normal use» scenarios, it’s unlikely you’ll run into longevity problems with the 950 Pro (or really, any modern SSD).

Support for the 950 Pro is currently absent from version 4.7 of Samsung’s Magician software, but before launch Samsung sent us a beta of the 4.8 version of its software, which is due to be released soon. Samsung’s «Rapid Mode» memory cache system currently does not work in Magician 4.7 under Windows 10 either, and this is also to fixed in 4.8.

Magician is worth mentioning as it is (or will be) part of the overall offering. Other SSD manufacturers offer their own toolbox software as well, but Samsung’s effort is of a very high quality. It shows, at a glance, SMART data and drive health, with quick links to firmware updates, secure erase, and a benchmarking tool (which predictably, is slightly generous with the figures it gives Samsung-branded drives).

Samsung’s specifications state the 256GB 950 Pro uses up to 6.4W of power when active, with the 512GB model using up to 7W, with averages of 5. 1W and 5.6W. Idle consumption is quoted at 70mW. It also supports DevSleep mode, with ultra-low consumption of just 2.5 mW. These figures will raise eyebrows as they’re higher than the 850 Pro, which Samsung quotes at 3.0W when in active use for the 1TB model.

Samsung is quoting sequential read speeds of (up to) 2,200MB/sec for the 256GB 950 Pro, and 2,500MB/sec for the 512GB model. 4KQD32 write IOPS are pegged at 85,000 for the 256GB drive and 110,000 for the 512GB, with read IOPS of up to 270,000 and 300,000 respectively.

Samsung SSD 950 Pro 512GB PCIe Review

It’s been five years since Samsung stormed into the solid state scene with the SSD 470 Series. Call them early days of SSD adoption, the company successfully faced foes such as the Crucial RealSSD C300 and OCZ Vertex 2.

After this stellar first run, Samsung followed through with the SSD 830 Series, offering great value at $1.50 per gigabyte versus $2.22 per gig for an Intel SSD 510 of the same capacity. A year later the SSD 840 Pro brought fame and fortune to the lineup along a larger 512GB drive ($1.17 per GB). Then last year saw the arrival of 1TB SSD 850 Pro drives, and you can now buy a 2TB version for $0.50 per gig.

We’ve finally reached the point where you can buy high capacity SSDs, although they are largely bound by the bandwidth limitation imposed by the SATA 6Gb/s interface, with top performing Samsung’s SSD 850 Pro offering sequential read and write speeds of 550 to 520MB/s.

A solution to this problem was revealed midway through 2014 with Intel’s Haswell refresh. The Z97 chipset packed support for the M.2 and SATA Express interfaces, both of which were designed to take mainstream SSD performance to the next level.

So far SATA Express has been a complete bust while M.2’s uptake has been slow, but things are in full swing now. Samsung was the first manufacturer to show what M.2 was capable of with its OEM XP941 PCIe SSD. Using four PCI Express lanes the XP941 was good for read and write speeds of 1,170 to 950MB/s.

Earlier this year the XP941 was replaced with an even faster Samsung M.2 SSD, the SM951 which boasted read and write speeds of 2,150 to 1,500MB/s and was later upgraded to support the new NVMe command set, offering even greater performance.

Since the arrival of the these initial M.2 SSD products, we’ve been waiting for a more affordable mainstream release, and that’s exactly what the SSD 950 Pro delivers. Made exclusively in the M.2 2280 form factor, the SSD 950 Pro comes in 256GB or 512GB capacities.

The 512GB model boasts a sequential read speed of 2.5GB/s and a write speed of 1.5GB/s making the 950 Pro reads superior than the SM951 NVMe. It’s also more affordable at $350 for the 512GB model, which is widely available to the public unlike previous OEM-only drives.

The Samsung 950 Pro is available in just two capacities, with no affordable 128GB option in sight. The 512GB model costs $350 which is a relatively high $0.68 per gigabyte, while the 256GB model costs $190 for an even more costly $0. 74 per gigabyte.

Featuring the same UBX 3-core controller found in the SM951, the 950 Pro receives native PCIe and NVMe support. For those of you wondering, the 850 Pro series used the MEX controller, a native SATA 6Gb/s controller.

Surprisingly, the SM951-NVMe was paired with Samsung’s 16nm 64Gbit MLC NAND flash where as the mainstream 850 Pro series received the more advanced Samsung 3D V-NAND (32-layer 86Gbit MLC) flash. This is where the 950 Pro has been upgraded, as the UBX controller has been paired with Samsung’s 3D V-NAND (32-layer 128Gbit MLC).

Therefore technically there is nothing «new» about the 950 Pro series, it just combines all the best bits that Samsung has brought to market so far.

For those of you not up to speed with V-NAND technology here is a quick explanation. Samsung’s V-NAND overcomes density limitations, performance and endurance of planar NAND by stacking the layers vertically, rather than decreasing the dimensions of the cells to try to fit them on a fixed horizontal space. The result is higher density, better endurance and superb performance in a smaller footprint than conventional planar NAND architecture

The claimed sequential performance is staggering as the 512GB model boasts a read throughput of 2.5GB/s and a write speed of 1.5GB/s. The 256GB model is quite a bit slower but still blistering fast compared to any SATA SSD with a read speed of 2.2GB/s and a write speed of 900MB/s.

To achieve this kind of performance the 950 Pro series uses the PCIe 3.0 x4 interface which provides 32 Gbit/s or 3.93GB/s of bandwidth. The XP941 for example used the PCIe 2.0 x4 interface which limited it to a maximum throughput of 20Gbit/s (2GB/s) and this simply won’t be enough for the 950 Pro.

This is interesting as the Z97 chipset, which first introduced the M.2 slot on the desktop, only supports up to eight PCIe 2.0 lanes with the rest of the PCIe lanes being hogged by graphics cards. All this changed with Skylake as the Z170 can support twenty PCIe 3. 0 lanes through the chipset, so putting aside four of those lanes for an M.2 slot to power the 950 Pro isn’t an issue.

The 950 Pro series is backed by a five-year limited warranty, the warranty is limited by how much data can be written. The 256GB version is capped at 200 terabytes written (TBW) while the larger 512GB model doubles that to 400 TBW. This means both models see an increase in the TBW limit over the 850 Pro by 50 TBW (256GB comparison) and 100 TBW (512GB comparison).

To ensure overheating does not become an issue like it did with the XP941, Samsung has equipped the 950 Pro series with Dynamic Thermal Throttling Protection technology, which monitors and maintains the drive’s optimal operating temperature. The throttle feature automatically drops the temperature of the SSD when it reaches a certain threshold, protecting the data and drive while ensuring continual responsiveness.

As an added safeguard, the 950 Pro includes the Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (S. M.A.R.T.) feature. This valuable feature tracks the health status of the SSD, monitoring it to detect and report on a variety of reliability indicators. S.M.A.R.T. is designed to anticipate failures and warn users of impending ones, enabling users to proactively replace an ailing drive, preventing data loss and unexpected outages.

Samsung SSD 950 Pro review

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Our Verdict

A very, very fast SSD that shows a strong future for M.2, but its speed advantage over SATA doesn’t mean too much for gaming.

More often than not, the latest piece of PC hardware is only a minor upgrade over its predecessor, offering slightly better performance and small improvements, but nothing that dramatically changes the game. It’s rare for new technology to outperform its predecessors so significantly it instantly makes them look dated.

The Samsung SSD 950 Pro is one such product. It features a whole new set of storage technologies that overcome the bottlenecks caused by older standards, which date back to a different era of PC tech. And with them, it improves performance enormously—at least some aspects of performance.

Like traditional 2.5-inch SSDs, the 950 Pro is based off NAND flash memory. But there are some big differences between the 950 Pro and traditional SSDs. Instead of SATA, the 950 Pro uses a different connector called M.2, which is built directly onto a PC’s motherboard. M.2 uses the PCI-Express bus for a much faster connection to the CPU than SATA, overcoming a major bottleneck in storage performance. SATA is limited to a theoretical maximum of 600MB/sec, a ceiling that many 2.5-inch SSDs have now reached, and cannot be overcome without a big change in the underlying technology.

The first generation of consumer motherboards to feature an M.2 slot was Z97, which arrived in early 2014 in conjunction with the second-generation ‘Devil’s Canyon’ consumer Intel processors like the Core i7-4790K. Since then, two more chipsets have arrived with M.2 support: X99, a high-end workstation / server chipset which is compatible with six-core and eight-core LGA2011 v3 processors, and Z170, which is the chipset that arrived this year with Intel’s new generation of consumer processors such as the Core i7-6700k, codenamed Skylake.

So to use the 950 Pro, you’ll need a motherboard in your PC that’s based on one of those chipsets. It’s a bit more complex than that, however, because there are some performance differences between them. M.2 in Z97 uses four PCI-Express 2.0 lanes which run at 500MB/sec each. X99 and Z170 use PCIe 3.0 lanes, which run at 1GB/sec each. This will obviously affect the speeds you get from the drive.

The 950 Pro has a few more tricks up its sleeve. In the same way the old SATA standard badly needed replacing, the old AHCI protocol, which governs the commands a PC can issue to storage devices, was designed in 2004, long before SSDs were really a consideration. It similarly needs an update. AHCI’s replacement is called NVMe. NVMe not only increases the number of commands that can be placed in a queue from 32 to 65536, it now allows for multiple queues, again up to 66536. Quite a leap. It also reduces latency, due to fewer register calls per IO command.

M.2 uses the PCIe bus for a much faster connection than SATA, overcoming a major bottleneck in performance.

The final aspect of the 950 Pro that’s worth mentioning is its use of Samsung’s 32-layer 3D flash memory technology, called V-NAND, as in the 850 Pro. V-NAND is quite different to typical planar NAND, as it stacks flash cells vertically and horizontally, rather than just horizontally, allowing for a much greater number of connections between them, better longevity and greater density.

The drive itself is a single-sided 80mm (also known as 2280) M.2 device, ensuring compatibility with as many motherboards as possible. There are just two capacities available: 256GB and 512GB, with a 1TB drive promised next year that will make use of 48-layer, higher density V-NAND. It’s quite possible to build double-sided M.2 devices but for now, Samsung is sticking with a single-sided format to make the drive as small as possible to fit into slim laptops.

All this technology schooling is to prepare you to understand how and why the 950 Pro’s performance differs from typical SATA SSDs, so let’s jump into some numbers.

Samsung quotes some really impressive performance figures for the 950 Pro. In their review guide, they say the 256GB model can manage 2,200MB/sec read and 900MB/sec write, while the 512GB model is capable of a monstrous 2,500MB/sec read and 1,400 MB/sec write. That’s between four and five times faster than a standard SATA SSD, and faster than other consumer PCI-Express SSDs.

An amazing leap forward, as are the quoted read IOPS (input/output operations per second). Samsung quotes up to 270,000 read IOPS and 85,000 write IOPS for the 256GB model and up to 300,000 read IOPS and 110,000 write IOPS for the 512GB model.

And we found that these quoted performance results matched what we saw in synthetic benchmark tests.

Crystal Disk Mark even showed slightly better figures, with read results of 2,278MB/sec and 2,537 MB/sec for the 256GB and 512GB 950 Pro models, respectively, while a 4K QD32 test in IOMeter showed read IOPS of 272,345 for the 256GB model and 351,253 for the 512GB model.

These figures are much higher than the 850 Pro, but the 256GB write IOPS notably aren’t much faster, as the 850 Pro result was 82,000, just 3000 IOPS less than the 256GB 950 Pro.

But for a closer look at the 950 Pro and gaming performance, we tested both drives to see their loading times with a PC game that gobbles up a large amount of storage: GTA V, which has a huge 60GB install.

We used a stopwatch to measure the time it took from clicking the icon on the desktop to the main menu appearing, and again timed how long it took from selecting the ‘Start Game’ option in the menu until the ‘Go to the guard’ message appears on the screen during the first scene of the game.

It’s not a completely scientific test, and these sequences have loading screens and fixed-speed animation, so the overall time depends on more than just the SSD’s performance.

But it seems these loading times were just about the same on the 950 Pro as they were on the 850 Pro. In two of the tests, there’s no real difference between the drives at all, and in the other two, when loading the main game itself, there’s a difference of around a second. Although with the 512GB models, it’s the 850 Pro, not the 950 Pro, that works out to be faster. But with less than 2 seconds difference, it’s still within the margin of error, and the real conclusion to be had is that the massive difference in sequential read and write speeds between SATA and PCI-Express SSDs does not mean a massive difference in real-world performance.

This slightly changes how we feel about the 950 Pro. Having those raw performance figures from a storage device that’s smaller than the average human finger is technically astounding, but it won’t really change much about how you use your computer or play games. Windows doesn’t boot particularly faster, and games don’t load much quicker. From what we’ve seen, frame rates are unaffected.

But we’re still blown away by the raw benchmark results. M.2 offers great sequential performance, the speeds are brilliant and a 950 Pro will make a nice additional purchase when building a Skylake-based gaming PC. But it doesn’t offer significant improvements to real-world performance, especially when gaming, and therefore this performance is a luxury, rather than essential.

Samsung’s SSD 850 Pro came with a massive 10-year warranty. The 950 Pro’s has been dropped to five years, although it offers greater overall longevity than the 850 Pro. The 256GB 950 Pro has quoted endurance levels of 200TBW, while the 512GB model goes up to 400TBW. This is an improvement over the 850 Pro, which already offered some of the most impressive endurance of any consumer SSD.

Pricing is $200 (£150) and $350 (£270) for the two capacities, although you’ll see different prices online as stock stabilizes. The pricing is reasonable, given that the 850 Pro is already one of the more expensive SATA SSDs you can buy. Older PCI-Express SSDs launched at much higher pricing than their SATA counterparts, particularly those that come in the traditional PCI card format.

You could save a few cents by opting for a cheaper SSD and ploughing those savings into a better graphics card, which will have a much bigger effect on gaming, advice that we think is absolutely worth following for anyone building a PC within a modest budget.

Read our review policy

Samsung SSD 950 Pro review

A very, very fast SSD that shows a strong future for M.2, but its speed advantage over SATA doesn’t mean too much for gaming.

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Samsung SSD 950 Pro Review (256GB & 512GB)

Written by

Matthew Lambert

November 11, 2015 | 10:23

Tags: #3d-nand #best-m2-ssd #m2 #nvme #samsung-ssd-950-pro-review #ssd #v-nand

Companies: #samsung

1 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review (256GB & 512GB)2 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — Test Setup3 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — CrystalDiskMark4 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — Steady State and Consistency5 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — Sequential Performance6 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — Random Performance7 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — Mixed Workloads8 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — PCMark 89 — Samsung SSD 950 PRO Review — Performance Analysis and Conclusion

Manufacturer: Samsung
UK price (as reviewed): 256GB: £146. 86 (inc VAT); 512GB: £270.46 (inc VAT)
US price (as reviewed): 256GB: $199.99 (ex Tax); 512GB: $349.99 (ex Tax)

We have now resolved the issue with our SSD test system that prevented us from obtaining results for Samsung’s SSD 950 Pro in time for the official reviews embargo lift. As such, this article will clarify what the issue was, briefly discuss the specs and features of the new drives and then dive into the results. For greater detail on the drives themselves please see our original preview article.

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The issue we had is worth drawing attention to since no faulty components were involved. We use an X99 motherboard for SSD testing, specifically the Asus Rampage V Extreme. However, when we originally tested the SSD 950 Pro drives both were being capped in performance. A later installation of a beta version of the Samsung Magician software revealed that the PCI-E link speed was being limited to 5Gbps, i. e. PCI-E Gen 2.0 instead of Gen 3.0, which the drives need to operate at full speed.

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The problem turned out to be something as simple as our overclock settings. We use Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 modules rated at 2,800MHz, and we were using their built in XMP profile for our system’s overclock. However, this automatically sets the base clock to 125MHz, which is a requirement when using high frequency memory (i.e. above 2,666MHz) on X99. However, this also affects the speed of other parts of the CPU, not just the cores, and one of those parts is the onboard PCI-E Gen 3.0 controller. In turn, in order to maintain PCI-E stability at this clock, our motherboard was downgrading the PCI-E interfaces to Gen 2.0. You can force the graphics slots back to Gen 3.0, but there’s no such option for the M.2 slot, which makes sense since storage devices require perfect stability. We have not been able to confirm exactly how other motherboard manufacturers handle the situation, but it’s probably safest to stick to 2,666MHz DDR4 on X99 when using a PCI-E 3. 0 storage device. It should also not be a problem on Z170, where the PCI-E controller’s clock is separate to the CPU BCLK.

Samsung SSD 950 PRO Specs	256GB	512GB
Interface	M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 (up to 32Gbps)
Formatted capacity	238.47GiB	476.94GiB
Controller	Samsung UBX
NAND dies	128Gbit Samsung 32-layer V-NAND MLC
NAND packages	2 x 128GiB	2 x 256GiB
DRAM	512MB Samsung LPDDR3
Warranty	Five years
Endurance	200 TBW (~110GB/day)	400 TBW (~220GB/day)

With that clarified, let’s take a brief look at the SSD 950 Pro (again, for a more detailed look, see here). It comes in either 256GB or 512GB flavours, but only in the single-sided M. 2 2280 form factor. They also use the PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface and the NVMe protocol. With Samsung’s UBX controller and LPDDR3 cache, they’re very similar to the NVMe version of the OEM SM951 SSD. However, they make a switch to Samsung’s second generation V-NAND dies, specifically 128Gbit 32-layer MLC dies, though performance is still mostly the same as the SM951. A 1TB SSD 950 Pro is planned for next year once the third-generation, 48-layer V-NAND dies roll out.

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What you do get over the SM951 is a better looking black PCB and extra features, including a proper Samsung-backed five year warranty with a solid endurance rating that’s a third higher than the 850 Pro, albeit in a warranty period that’s half as long – it’s a shame Samsung hasn’t retained the 10 year period for the 950 Pro. You also get full software support in the Samsung Magician software as well as hardware accelerated encryption with TCG Opal 2. 0, to be enabled through a future firmware update.

Samsung SSD 950 PRO	256GB	512GB
Max Sequential Read	2,200MB/sec	2,500MB/sec
Max Sequential Write	900MB/sec	1,500MB/sec
Max Random Read (4K QD1)	11K IOPS	12K IOPS
Max Random Write (4K QD1)	43K IOPS	43K IOPS
Max Random Read (4K QD32)	270K IOPS	300K IOPS
Max Random Write (4K QD32)	85K IOPS	110K IOPS

The cost per formatted gigabyte of these drives is about 62p/GB (256GB) and 57p/GB (512GB), which is certainly high given that we now have SATA SSDs hitting less than 25p/GB, but they do combine many of the latest technologies and features into a consumer-friendly package with what looks to be very high performance. By the same basis, they’re also considerably cheaper than the only other widely available consumer-grade NVMe drive, the Intel SSD 750 (around 70 to 80p per formatted GB).

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Samsung SSD 950 Pro Review (256GB & 512GB)

Performance Analysis

The CrystalDiskMark figures show extremely strong fresh-out-of-box results. The sequential numbers are from a queue depth of one, and even here the SSD 950 Pro is well above 2GB/sec on reads. For writes, both drives perform beyond their stated figures, with the 512GB drive being especially impressive at 1,536MB/sec, which is more than 300MB/sec more than Intel’s SSD 750 1. 2TB. Random performance favours Intel’s drive overall, however, particularly at high queue depths, though the Samsung drives are better with low queue depth random reads.

For a drive with no additional overprovisioning, the 950 Pro performs extremely well in steady state. That said, the 256GB isn’t as fast as the equivalent SSD 850 Pro, but the 512GB drive was significantly quicker. That said, neither drive could match the Intel SSD 750, which is helped in large part by its massive overprovisioning. Still, the performance consistency of the 950 Pro is also excellent, with minimal performance variation, low response times and no signs of thermal throttling even after a full hour of sustained writes – these are drives that will hold up very well over time.

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Sequential performance under Iometer is very strong, especially with reads. On writes, the 256GB drive may not be as quick as the 512GB or Intel’s SSD 750 series, but with writes easily hitting over 900MB/sec it offers more than double what many SATA-based SSDs do.

Random reads at QD1 are only up there with the top SATA drives, but at QD4 the 950 Pro scales up and pulls away, although Intel still rules the roost here. It does too on random writes, although here the 950 Pro has a decisive advantage over SATA SSDs, though it’s the 512GB drive that can flex its muscles the most under heavier workloads.

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The excellent sequential performance is maintained when both reads and writes are performed together. At 75/25 and 50/50 percent read/write distributions, the drives are without competition. At 25/75 percent, the Intel drive manages to catch the 256GB 950 Pro thanks to the latter’s weaker write performance but the 512GB drive is about 200MB/sec quicker still – it also smashes through the limits of SATA in every test. With mixed random workloads, the tables are flipped and Intel has a clear lead. Still, the 512GB 950 Pro is better than all the SATA SSDs, though the 256GB one is beaten by a couple.

It’s hard to argue with the PCMark 8 workload results. These tell us that in typical desktop workloads, be they light office tasks or more demanding production ones, the 950 Pro is simply excellent – it gets the top two places every time. Also, the 256GB model does not appear to be held back in spite of its lower performance elsewhere. Even in the most write-intensive workload, Photoshop Heavy, the 256GB is just a fraction of a second slower.

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Even in write intensive tasks the 512GB model is barely ahead. Overall there’s 30 seconds between this drive and slowest SATA drive in the Photoshop test, and 10 seconds ahead of the best — the OCZ Arc 100 240GB. That’s only across a six minute workload, so clearly if this is something you regularly do, the 950 Pro is worth the extra outlay. Granted, the real-world difference between these drives still won’t be big or even noticeable in many cases, particularly in lighter workloads, but the Photoshop Heavy test does give the NVMe drives a signficant lead.

Conclusion

Through the combination of a high-bandwidth PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface and the NVMe protocol, the 950 Pro achieves excellent performance in all metrics. It is without doubt the best M.2 SSD there currently is, and the 512GB model is, in our opinion, the best enthusiast-class SSD overall too. That said, Intel’s SSD 750 does make a decent argument for itself if your workload is dependent upon sustained, high queue depth random accesses, but that’s getting more into workstation/prosumer territory.

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The choice of form factor is also appropriate. Currently, support for M.2 2280 devices with a PCI-E 3.0 x4 connection is widespread among mid-range and high-end Z170 and X99 motherboards, and even for older motherboards you can buy PCI-E add-in card adaptors. Yes, the capacity is limited to four times lower than what Samsung can achieve in 2.5in, but the focus is more on performance than capacity. Not only would a high capacity 2.5in device be very expensive, it would also use a U.2 connector, which very few motherboards have. Thermal throttling is another concern for M.2 drives (hence the lack of double-sided parts), but in our setup at least the SSD 950 Pro appeared to be unaffected. Granted, we were testing in an ATX case (panels on) with good airflow and a relatively low ambient temperature, but it’s still promising. Even in a more constrained environment like a small form factor build, it’s unlikely to be that big of an issue since demanding tasks tend to come in bursts leaving the drive with plenty of idle time in which to cool down.

In terms of cost, the SSD 950 Pro is also well priced considering its performance and feature set. It certainly has the upper hand on Intel, the only other company producing an NVMe SSD for the consumer market. The 950 Pro is a good showcase of NVMe’s potential and ability to move the SSD market forward, but the advantages are definitely workload dependent and in spite of some seriously impressive numbers the transition from AHCI to NVMe won’t be like the HDD to SSD transition in terms of overall system responsiveness. Not everything will suddenly be five times faster, but for users with heavy I/O workflows (e.g. media production and editing) there are clear advantages.

Samsung SSD 950 Pro 256GB Scores

Samsung SSD 950 Pro 512GB Scores

Review and testing of the video card Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 OC

Introduction
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 OC

Packaging and delivery
Appearance and dimensions
Cooling system
PCB

Test bench
Instrumentation and Test Method
Standard frequencies and overclocking
Cooling System Potential Study
Electricity consumption level
Conclusion

Introduction

The laboratory continues the cycle of materials devoted to video cards of the GeForce GTX 950 series. Earlier we reviewed several versions from different manufacturers:

ASUS GeForce GTX 950 OC;
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 WindForce 2X;
Inno3D GeForce GTX 950 2GB Gaming OC;
KFA2 GeForce GTX 950 Black OC Sniper Edition;
KFA2 GeForce GTX 950 EXOC White;
MSI GeForce GTX 950 Gaming 2G;
Palit GeForce GTX 950 StormX;
Palit GeForce GTX 950 StormX Dual.

The above list does not end the study of this line of graphics accelerators. We continue to search for the very model that will be the best choice due to its consumer qualities. We have already met quiet versions, and productive ones, and with good overclocking. But what if we look at more affordable solutions?

Thanks to our partner, the company Regard, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 OC video card became the hero of the review. Despite such a discreet name, it is curious in its own way. Personally, I wonder why the developers did not use the prefix “Mini” or “ITX” in the name? After all, the novelty turned out not only budgetary, but also compact.

recommendations

Review Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 OC

Full name: GeForce GTX950 Gigabyte PCI-E 2048Mb (GV-N950OC-2GD), manufacturer code: GV-N950OC-2GD.

Packaging and delivery

The Gigabyte comes in a small package. All printing is reduced to dark colors and a well-known image that has become a brand name for the company.

Front side information includes series name, factory overclocking, and 90mm fan design.

On the back of the package you can see the main advantages of the tested model. Among them, it is worth noting the use of high-quality Ultra Durable 2 element base and support for the OC Guru II utility, which will help both with fine-tuning the video card and with its overclocking.

A favorite moment with the Gigabyte box is the PC system requirements. The developers recommend that your platform is based on Intel. More interesting information is the mention of a power supply with a power of at least 400 watts.

Inside, everything is normal for the budget version of the GeForce GTX 950: the novelty is placed in an antistatic bag and fixed with thick cardboard sheets.

The scope of delivery has not changed: we still receive only documentation and a driver disk.

Appearance and dimensions

Model Gigabyte GeForce GTX 950 OC is presented by the developers as the most affordable version among other video cards of this series. But she is not deprived of chips, which in this case consist in additional caps on the video output connectors.

However, let’s not focus on the little things, but immediately proceed to the study of the main details.

The main changes in the design of the novelty are reduced to the casing of the cooling system with decorative grooves and lines. The central place is given to a single fan, the diameter of which is 90 mm. The rotor has a sticker with the name of the manufacturer.

No support or reinforcement plate. Here we note the dense layout of the printed circuit board and the presence of an SLI connector for connecting a second video card into a single tandem.

The rear interface panel has the following set of video outputs:

One DVI-D;
One DVI-I;
One HDMI;
One DisplayPort.

The following resolutions are supported:

Digital — up to 4096 x 2160;
Analog — up to 2048 x 1536.

According to the technical information provided by the official website, it is possible to use all four outputs at the same time.

According to the recommended requirements for the power supply, the information varies: 400 W are indicated on the package, 350 W on the official website. In any case, the GeForce GTX 950 model is not particularly voracious, so you can use a more budget PSU.

However, additional power is still provided and provided by one six-pin connector on the edge of the PCB.

Subscribe to our channel in Yandex.Zen or telegram channel @overclockers_news — these are convenient ways to follow new materials on the site. With pictures, extended descriptions and no ads.

Review and testing of the video card ASUS GeForce GTX 950 (GTX950-2G) GECID.com. Page 1

::>Video cards
>2016
> ASUS GTX950-2G

06/21/2016

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As we know, the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 graphics card is a very attractive price-performance solution for building gaming systems focused on Full HD resolution. It was introduced in August 2015 and was originally based on the NVIDIA GM206-250-A1 GPU. The overall TDP for it is declared at level 90 W, so one 6-pin PCIe connector is required for correct operation. In March 2016, the NVIDIA GM206-251-A1 GPU entered the market, which has the same number of building blocks and runs at the same clock speeds as the original NVIDIA GM206-250-A1, but it is characterized by lower power consumption. This allowed NVIDIA partners to present new modifications of the already familiar NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 video card, only without an additional 6-pin connector and with a TDP of 75 watts.

ASUS was among the first to please with such a novelty by presenting the ASUS GeForce GTX 950 (GTX950-2G) video card, which has enough power from the PCI Express x16 slot to work. Despite the decrease in the TDP level to 75 W, this modification functions quite calmly not only at reference frequencies, but also has a small level of factory overclocking. In addition, as of June 2016, ASUS GeForce GTX 950 (GTX950-2G) is the most affordable modification of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950 in the assortment of a Taiwanese company.

ASUS GTX950-2G graphics card specification:

Model

ASUS GeForce GTX 950 (GTX950-2G)

Graphics core

NVIDIA GM206-251 (Maxwell)

Number of CUDA cores

768

Rated / dynamic frequency of the graphics core, MHz

«OC»

1051 / 1228

«Gaming»

1026 / 1190

Memory frequency (effective), MHz

1653 (6610)

Memory size, GB

2

Memory type

GDDR5

Memory bus width, bit

128

Memory bandwidth, GB/s

105. 8

Tire type

PCI Express 3.0 x16

Image output interfaces

1 x DVI-I

1 x HDMI

1 x DisplayPort

Minimum power supply, W

350

Dimensions from the official website (according to measurements in our test lab), mm

210 x 113 x 40 (223 x 120)

Drivers

Latest drivers can be downloaded from the ASUS website or the GPU manufacturer’s website

Manufacturer website

ASUS

Packing and contents

The video card is supplied in a fairly large cardboard box, designed in the style of the World of Warships game. This is no coincidence, because with it you will get the opportunity to activate (for new players only) the armored cruiser «Diana» and 15 days of premium access in this game.

The list of system requirements for the computer in which the video accelerator is planned to be installed is located on one of the sides of the box. Based on the recommendations, the power supply in such a system must have a power of at least 350 W and deliver at least 24 A through the + 12V line.

ASUS GTX950-2G comes with a quick start guide and a CD with drivers and utilities.

The following set of interfaces is used to display an image on the tested model:

1 x DVI-I;

1 x HDMI;

1 x DisplayPort.

Recall that the reference version includes three DisplayPort video outputs, one HDMI and one DVI-I. Thus, ASUS GTX9The 50-2G lost two DisplayPorts, which is quite logical for an inexpensive model that will not be able to provide comfortable performance in games on a multi-monitor configuration. If you want to connect an analog monitor, then you will have to take care of having the appropriate adapter yourself.

Appearance and element base

The ASUS GTX950-2G video card is made on the original black printed circuit board. The arrangement of key elements is quite standard: two of the four video memory chips are soldered around the GPU, while the components of the core and memory power subsystems are located to the left and right of it, respectively.

The novelty is powered by a four-phase scheme (three phases for the GPU and one for the memory chips). As for the element base, it corresponds to the Super Alloy Power II proprietary concept. It includes solid-state and tantalum-polymer capacitors, as well as chokes with a ferrite core. As a result, the manufacturer notes a decrease in operating temperatures, an increase in energy efficiency and an increase in service life. The novelty itself was created on the unique and fully automated ASUS AUTO-EXTREME Technology line.

The GPU power subsystem is implemented on a uP9501P digital PWM controller manufactured by uPI Semiconductor, information about which is not publicly available.

The graphics adapter under test is powered exclusively by the PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot.

To ensure the operation of NVIDIA SLI technology, one connector is installed to connect the corresponding bridge. It allows you to combine a pair of video accelerators for joint calculation of graphic effects.

The reverse side of the circuit board is notable for two video memory chips, some electrical components and cooling system mounting screws. One of the screws is covered with a warranty sticker, so removing the heatsink without voiding the warranty won’t help you, although the fan shroud detaches without any problems.

The novelty is based on the NVIDIA GM206-251-A1 graphics chip, which is manufactured using a 28-nm process technology. It consists of 768 CUDA cores, 48 texture units and 32 raster units. Default in ASUS GTX950-2G, the «Gaming» mode is active, in which the base frequency of the GPU is increased from the nominal 1024 to 1026 MHz, and the dynamic one — from 1188 to 1190 MHz.

In the ASUS GPU Tweak II with XSplit Gamecaster utility, you can enable the «OC» profile at speeds of 1051 and 1228 MHz, respectively, although GPU-Z indicates raising the base frequency to 1064 MHz. Note that testing was carried out in the «Gaming» mode.

The memory of ASUS GeForce GTX 950 (GTX950-2G), with a total capacity of 2 GB, is assembled using four Samsung K4G41325FC-HC28 chips with a capacity of 4 Gb each. According to the documentation, their nominal effective frequency is 7000 MHz, but in our case it was lowered to 6610 MHz, which allows us to hope for their good overclocking potential. Data exchange between the graphics core and memory is carried out through a 128-bit bus, which is capable of passing 105.8 GB of information per second.

Cooling system

One of the indisputable advantages of the ASUS GTX950-2G is its original design of the cooler cover in white, which will definitely please the owners of white system units and some ASUS motherboards, for example, ASUS Z170-A. In addition, the video card turned out to be quite compact, and with the installed cooling system it occupies two expansion slots with a total length of 210 mm according to the official website (223 mm according to measurements in our test lab).

The design of the cooler is quite simple and compact. It consists of an all-metal heatsink with fins (168 x 80 x 18mm) for better heat dissipation and two 74mm axial fans mounted on a plastic shroud.

The turntables themselves are manufactured by Everflow and are marked «T128010SH», which indicates the use of sleeve bearings. The nominal voltage of their operation is 12 V, and the current strength is 0.25 A, which gives a total power of 3 watts.

With automatic regulation of the fan blades speed, in the maximum load mode, the graphics core heated up to 68°C, and the cooler, judging by the monitoring readings, worked at only 39% of its maximum power. The noise level was quiet and barely audible.

For comparison, here are the results of a very similar model with an identical cooling system — ASUS GeForce GTX 950 (GTX950-OC-2GD5) , which has a standard TDP of 90 W and a slightly higher GPU frequency. Despite the fact that in a similar mode the temperature index was at around 67°C, the cooler operated at 62% of its maximum capacity.

In the maximum fan speed mode, the temperature of the GPU dropped to 53°C. The noise emitted at the same time did not exceed the average level, and remained quite usable. In a similar mode, the cooler of the modification mentioned above was able to keep the temperature of the faster GPU at around 59°C, but the noise level was above average.

In the absence of load, the frequencies of the graphics core and memory are automatically reduced, which leads to a decrease in their power consumption and heat dissipation. In this mode, the GPU temperature does not exceed 33°C.

In general, the use of a similar ASUS GeForce GTX 950 (GTX950-OC-2GD5) cooling system at lower frequencies and TDP allowed us to achieve excellent results, because you will get not only a cold, but also a quiet video card even at maximum fan speed, which, you will agree , is important, especially in overclocking experiments.

OVERVIEW — 2019 DUCATI Multistrada 950 and 950 S — what the lightest road wagon in the line has grown into

2019 in a completely new guise. According to the manufacturer, the DUCATI Multistrada 950 will make every trip extraordinary, providing the rider with amazing ease of control combined with the highest level of safety and, of course, comfort.

High-quality homologation of the previous version of the DUCATI Multistrada 950, which has not changed for almost three years, resulted in the birth of a completely new bike, albeit incorporating the best features, solutions and manifestations of the progenitor.

The Italians have left the basic concept of the motorcycle unchanged — light, and therefore affordable, but at the same time quite powerful and comfortable station wagon appealed to travel enthusiasts. For this reason, DUCATI Motors decided to simply improve the base model as much as possible.

The new 2019 Multistrada 950 will feature Bosch’s 6-vector IMU, which continuously reads the bike’s position in space. The device made it possible to equip the motorcycle with a technological ABS system that works effectively in rolls, and the function of automatically turning off the direction indicators.

In addition to traction control, Vehicle Hold Control (VHC) will be available to keep the car from rolling backwards for easier hill starts, even with a full load of saddlebags and a passenger.

The clutch in the 2019 version will be equipped with a hydraulic clutch.

The updated DUCATI Multistrada 950 will also feature a redesigned swingarm and new alloy wheels, as well as an improved bike control interface that will be easier and more understandable for the rider.

The new DUCATI Multistrada 950 is in its element of fun and easy riding

DUCATI Multistrada 950 S – another step towards absolute comfort

Along with the homologation, the new Multistrada 950 received a special version — an even more comfortable and technological version with the “S” index.

The 2019 DUCATI Multistrada 950 S 2019 range will be upgraded with DUCATI Skyhook EVO electronic suspension, which continuously analyzes the ground under the wheels and fine-tunes the damping for maximum performance and rider comfort. The gearbox will be supplemented with a quick shift function without a clutch Quick Shift, which works on up and down gears. The dashboard screen will sparkle with colors: on the DUCATI Multistrada 950 S will be equipped with a 5-inch TFT display, the same as in the «older» version of the DUCATI Multistrada 1260 Enduro, which is «sewn» with the Hands Free system and cruise control.

5″ TFT color display DUCATI Multistrada 950 S

A special version of the DUKATI Multistrada with the “S” index will be illuminated by LED lamps with the function of highlighting the turning zone, controlled by the Bosch IMU.

The color scheme will be complemented by a strict livery «glossy gray» with a red frame and black alloy wheels, which can be replaced with spoked wheels at the request of the buyer.

DUCATI Multistrada 950 S 2019 in new high-gloss gray livery

Both versions of the new Multistrada 950 are equipped with the same 937cc Testastretta 11° motor. The liquid-cooled heart of the bike, with four valves per cylinder, strikes the right balance of ease of handling, smooth operation and performance. Maximum power of 113 liters. With. with a torque of 96 Nm, it is enough for a confident drive with a passenger and a full load both on a flat highway and on light off-road.

DUCATI Multistrada 950/950 S engine, securely covered by structural elements of the frame and body kit

Motor control modes make the bike suitable even for everyday city driving. To customize the character and behavior of the motorcycle to the desired conditions, just select one of four presets — Urban, Enduro, Sport or Touring, each of which adjusts the engine output and electronic assistance systems to specific riding conditions, helping the rider to better feel the bike and provide the necessary security level.

The 6-speed transmission with fluid clutch, soft servo and DUCATI Quick Shift Up & Down (DQS) is responsible for the efficient transfer of engine power to the wheel.

Chassis of the new 2019 DUCATI Multistrada 950/950 S line

Like the previous DUCATI Multistrada, the new bike of the series is built on a birdcage frame of strong steel pipes with fiberglass reinforcement that increases torsional rigidity. The seat height for the basic version is 840 mm, saddles with a seat of 820 or 860 mm are available as accessories.

The suspension of the Multistrada 950 and Multistrada 950 S versions has distinct differences. The base bike has a 48mm front fork with a fully adjustable shock and a rear dual swingarm on a monoshock with remote preload adjustment.

In the DUCATI Multistrada 950 S version, the same front and rear suspension is equipped with the DUCATI Skyhook Suspension Evo (DSS) semi-active electronic system, which dynamically automatically adjusts the damper settings depending on the selected driving mode and road surface conditions.

The weight of the Multistrada 950 has been reduced by 0.5 kg in the 2019 version thanks to the upgraded wheels. Alloy wheels measuring 3.0″x19″ at the front and 4.5″x17″ at the rear are shod with Pirelli Scorpion Trail II sports touring tires in 120/70 ZR19 and 170/60 ZR17 respectively.

For the Multistrada 950 S, in addition to the standard alloy wheels, spoked wheels are also available to give the bike a more off-road character.

Spoke wheels for DUCATI Multistrada 950S

Brakes DUCATI Multistrada 950/950 S

The electronic and mechanical components of the brake system in all versions of the 2019 Multistrada are completely identical. The bikes are equipped with high-performance Brembo monobloc front calipers with four pistons and two semi-floating discs with a diameter of 320 mm. The rear wheel has a 2-piston caliper and one 265mm disc. The Bosch Cornering ABS system is responsible for efficient distribution of braking forces and prevention of wheel blocking during braking, which works even in corners thanks to its connection with the IMU inertial measuring unit. The degree of intervention of the ABS system varies depending on the selected riding mode.

Security package DUCATI Multistrada 950/950 S

A distinctive feature of the new DUCATI Multistrada series is an increased level of safety.

DUCATI’s signature electronics package includes traction control (DTC), rear wheel roll control (VHC) and Bosch Cornering ABS.

The security package has been extended for the special version of the DUCATI Multistrada 950. It includes a “hands-free” system that allows you to answer calls and communicate with a passenger on the go, a turning light that works when interacting with the IMU, and bright external LED lighting that is visible even during the day.

So what will the DUCATI Multistrada 950 look like in 2019? Obviously, even more convenient and safe, easy to manage, but still dynamic and, most importantly, versatile. And the special version of the DUCATI Multistrada 950 S is a bike that bridges the gap between the lightest Italian adventure game and the top of the range, the DUCATI Multistrada 1260.

motorrika

November 26, 2018

Views: 3331

Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 test and review (2022)

Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 test and review (2022)

Start

Deebot OZMO 950

Ilya

Last update: 08/03/2022

7 Min.

We have extensively tested the Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 . .. and loved it!

While all eyes were on the well-known «stars of the industry» — «Roborock» and «iRobot», a much less well-known competitor crept up to the throne.

This is the Chinese manufacturer Ecovacs.

Because with the Deebot OZMO 950, Ecovacs has succeeded in building a truly great machine.

The vacuum cleaner is much better than all previous models of the manufacturer.

But the Ecovacs suction robot is much more than that.

With precise navigation , excellent suction power and good wipe function , this versatile is currently one of ‘s absolute top models.

What exactly makes the Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 different and what our experience with this model is, you will find out in the following test report.

Ecovacs

Deebot OZMO 950

Price from 33. 000 ₽

The

OZMO 950 is one of the best cleaning robots on the market. Not only the suction power is impressive, but also the wipe function!

Benefits:

Extremely high quality workmanship

Electronic water supply via App

Multiple card storage (2 floors)

«Hybrid model» — vacuum and wipe at the same time.

Carpets are automatically avoided when wiping

Good cleaning results. Especially on carpets

excellent app App

Long run time up to 200 minutes

Carpets drawn on the map

Weaknesses:

frequently used bumper

Overcoming an obstacle with a maximum height of 1.7 cm — lower than others

Waterproof mat not included.

Everything at a glance

Thanks to the good cleaning performance of on carpets and hard floors, the vacuum cleaner is suitable for almost every household.

Hybrid model: OZMO 950 can vacuum and mop at the same time

Good value for money

Suitable for use in homes with multiple floors (2 cards can be stored)

— Best carpet detection function (carpets are marked on the map and avoided when wiping)

Suitable for farms with animals that have a lot of wool . A straight brush head is included to prevent hair from wrapping around the brush.

During our intensive cleaning tests, we examined the suction capacity of the Deebot Ecovacs OZMO 950 very seriously. After that, the robot vacuum cleaner was allowed to show its high performance in our test area with maximum suction power.

Some parts of Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950:

4 different suction levels (Silent, Standard, Max and Max+)

1500 Pa . Suction power at the highest suction level «Maximum+».

Capacity mobile dust collector 430 ml.

HEPA filter available

2 side brushes fitted

Main brush consists of hard bristles

Supplied with second suction nozzle (straight nozzle without brush ) for hair (animal and human hair).

Laminate Suction Test

The Deebot OZMO 950 was initially approved for laminate.

Lentil test results (47 g absorbed from 50 g | 9four%).

The little au pair did a pretty good job of clearing the lentils off the hard floor.

On a negative note, we noticed that the lentils were scattered a bit by the rotation of the side brushes.

However, Deebot OZMO 950 was able to collect 94% of the distributed dirt.

Review and test results with oatmeal (45g absorbed from 50g | 90%).

Also our second type of dirt (oatmeal) was almost completely removed by the robot vacuum cleaner.

We also noticed that oatmeal was thrown around the room from time to time by the side brushes.

Review and test results with sand (46 g absorbed from 50 g | 92%).

We especially liked it.

The OZMO 950 cleaned everything exceptionally well.

The robot cleaner could not pick up only 4 g. sand.

Deebot OZMO 950 during a vacuum test on carpets

Experience shows that cleaning carpets in front of robotic vacuum cleaners has more serious problems.

Especially on high carpets, dirt quickly sinks into the carpet.

As a result, it is difficult for robotic vacuum cleaners to reliably clean dirt again.

For this purpose, the OZMO 950 is equipped with an automatic carpet detection function.

Carpet is reliably detected and suction power is increased to its maximum level when moving across carpet.

This also works absolutely flawlessly, whether it’s a small mat or a larger one.

Review and test result on short pile carpet

Review and test result on long pile carpet

On carpets Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 performed excellently in our test.

Ecovacs has had no problems with lentils.

On short and high pile carpets, 49 g (or 98%) of grains were collected again.

Test results with oatmeal also looked great.

Positive result: neither oatmeal nor lentils were scattered on the carpets (short pile / high pile) by the side brushes.

Finally, during our Ecovacs test, the Deebot OZMO 950 was sand approved.

And this is where the robot vacuum reveals its true power: the carpet perfectly cleans the sand .

Hardly any other robot vacuum achieves the same high results here!

Short pile carpet: sand test result (35 g out of 50 g | 70%) .

High pile carpet: sand test results (40g out of 50g | 80%).

Review of cleaning test results

The Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 was especially convincing on carpets.

If you have a lot of carpets at home, then Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 is a very good choice!

But our experience with hard floors was also positive.

A minor drawback was that very light dirt was sometimes ejected when the side brushes rotated. However, the cleaning result was overall very good — more than 90%.

Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 in daily cleaning

In addition to our test site, we naturally observed the Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 very closely during daily cleaning in our apartment. The

Ecovacs robot vacuum was very convincing.

The vacuum cleaner is very easy to operate : quickly open the App, select the rooms to be cleaned and press the start button.

In our experience, the cleaning result was very convincing with daily soiling.

You have 4 cleaning levels to choose from

You can choose 4 different suction levels for your robot cleaner (Quiet, Standard, Max and Max+).

At the lowest suction level, the robot is particularly quiet and the suction power is correspondingly lower.

The names of the individual suction levels sound so impressive ;). Somehow the manufacturer seems to have to constantly come up with new names. However, we think it’s very good that you can choose between 4 power levels.

On paper, Deebot OZMO 950 has a suction power of about 1500 Pa at with the highest suction level (max+). This is quite a decent figure.

For the daily cleaning of the floors in our 80 m² apartment (no children, no pets, only hard floors), we were able to achieve very good results in the «standard» suction mode.

If you live in a large house, we recommend that you select the «Maximum» or «Maximum+» suction mode.

Dust container and HEPA filter

Dust container has a capacity of 430 ml .

When the container is full of dust, the OZMO 950 stops and you are prompted via the App to empty the container.

There are models with a larger dust container, but in our experience, the OZMO 950 size is sufficient.

In our 80 m² apartment, we were able to vacuum our house 3-5 times before the mobile dust container was full.

The dust container can be easily inserted and removed with a handle and transported for emptying.

The dust bin has a small «dust flap» that prevents dirt from escaping during transport into the bin.

Minor Dust Cap Fault: During testing, we noticed that small dirt residues are likely to be trapped by the flap and not enter the dust container.

The dust container above the waste bin is emptied with the red button.

Advantage for allergy sufferers : The dust container is designed in such a way that you do not come into contact with dust — neither during removal, nor during transport, nor when emptying, nor when replacing.

It is noteworthy that the manufacturer pays special attention to allergy sufferers. We think Ecovacs has really succeeded here.

In Deebot OZMO 9 dust bag50 installed HEPA filter.

This ensures that the exhaust air is first free of fine dust.

This is an indispensable feature, especially for allergy sufferers.

The HEPA filter can be easily removed from the dust chamber and gently emptied into the sink or trash can.

Our cleaning tip for : We recommend washing the filter monthly. Remove the filter and keep it under running water.

Please make sure the HEPA filter is completely dry before putting it back in. Usually 24 hours is enough.

Main brush

Main brush consisting of bristles . This type of design has now become the standard for all common robot vacuum cleaner models.

With the main brush, dirt (especially on carpets) can be collected and sucked up much more efficiently.

2 side brushes

Compared to many competitors, the Deebot OZMO 950 has two side brushes (instead of one).

We think it doesn’t hurt to have another side brush. However, in our cleaning tests, we were unable to find any significant drawbacks with single side brush robots.

OZMO 950 on Yandex*

Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 is a suction and wet wipe robot.

It goes without saying that in our review of we also took a closer look at the wipe function.

200 ml water tank attaches to the rear of the wet mop robot. Then the washing plate with a napkin is attached.

Let’s start.

The wash plate can be installed very easily and simply.

After a while, you will quickly get used to it.

With the Electric Water Pump , the water supply can be controlled manually from the using the App on 4 levels (low, medium, high and very high).

A remarkable feature of the is the automatic water regulation using patented OZMO technology.

This gives you even more flexibility and you can, for example, increase the water supply to ensure cleanliness.

The robot Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 worked in our apartment, which wipes the floors (laminate, parquet and tiles). During our tests, we had the best result with a «very high» water delivery rate.

After cleaning our 80 m² apartment, the water tank was filled with another ⅓ of water.

At lower flow rates (low, medium and high) we felt that the water output was too low — even for sensitive floors.

The amount of water that gives the best cleaning result depends on the individual (eg the size of the apartment, the degree of soiling or the sensitivity of the floors).

Just experiment a little. You’ll soon see which settings work best for your floors.

However, at the moment we would like to draw attention to one small drawback.

The package does not include a waterproof plastic mat, thanks to which the Deebot OZMO 9 wet wipe50 will not be able to wet the floor while charging the battery.

Our tip: If possible, place the charging station on an insensitive surface such as a tile.

If you do not have such a surface, we recommend that you simply take a small piece of plastic from the store and clip it under the charging station. Problem solved. Alternatively, you can remove the cleaning cloth immediately after each wipe.

For Ecovacs carpets Deebot OZMO 950 has another brilliant feature.

When the water tank is fixed, the carpets will not be affected.

This means that the damp cloth will not get on the carpet.

A great feature that hardly any competitor can offer!

Wipe Function Overview and Conclusion

Some criticize the wipe function.

Because currently no robot vacuum cleaner in general — and Deebot OZMO 950 in particular — can replace manual wet cleaning.

The weight of the small wet cleaning robot is too small. This means that the squeegee doesn’t press hard enough to remove the really tough stains.

But such a comparison was never a criterion in our tests.

A beautiful and even water film remains especially at high water levels. Thus, the wipe function ensures that your home is kept clean and fresh.

A very positive effect of cleaning: where before the apartment was wiped once a week, a small robot with a wet wipe now does it almost daily.

Result: in principle, the apartment is cleaner and you have to wipe less by hand.

If you look at the mop from time to time, you can see how much dust and dirt the OZMO 950 still wipes. You can also add a special cleaner to the water tank. This further improves the wiping result.

Further tips and tricks to improve the wiping function can be found in our detailed section «Suction robot with wiping function» -> «Our tips and tricks».

OZMO 950 on Yandex*

According to our experience, good and efficient navigation of the suction robot is a decisive factor in the success of cleaning.

Because if the robot vacuum cleaner wanders headless around the apartment and does not move around all the rooms, then even the best cleaning will not bring much benefit 🙂 map.

Creating and storing maps

During the first sweep of the vacuum cleaner, a detailed map of your home is created . This process is called «mapping».

To make this process as easy and fast as possible , we advise you to open all doors and remove unnecessary obstructions (eg clothing, toys, cables, etc.).

The little au pair is initially insecure and must find his way. Help him, he will thank you with his flawless and efficient cleaning 🙂

The robot cleaner works very systematically during its first run.

In the App application you can see in real time how the map of your apartment is filled step by step.

Rooms , including door thresholds, are accurately identified and automatically marked on the map . In addition, larger furniture and other furniture (such as sofa, dining table, cabinets, etc.) are neatly marked on the map.

In addition, OZMO 950 is currently the only robot vacuum cleaner that recognizes carpets and marks them on a map.

This is a great feature. Thanks to this, the carpet is immediately visible as a mark on the map. If necessary (without much trial and error), it is very easy to designate a forbidden area for a carpet.

Of course, many interesting settings can be made on a saved map0147 etc. ).

More information about this can be found in the «Mobile app» chapter.

Multiple maps can be created and saved (for 2 floors).

The ability to create and save several maps of different floors is an absolute advantage of Deebot OZMO 950.

In total, the application can easily create and save 2 maps of different floors.

Ecovacs calls this «Multi-Floor-Mapping» technology.

Especially for multi-storey families, this is a really useful feature.

To create another second floor map, do the following:

Activate «Multi-storey cleaning» in the settings.

take your Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 950 with the charging station to the second floor

start the cleaning process

A new map of your second floor is created and stored in the application.

The second map can be found again in the application under the «Manage Maps» menu item and edited accordingly.

Now you can simply carry the Deebot OZMO 950 to the appropriate floor (important: including the charging station!), and the robot vacuum cleaner will do its job flawlessly . The robot vacuum cleaner from Ecovacs automatically recognizes which card is suitable for the floor.

Laser Navigation

Ecovacs uses technology laser navigation (LDS technology), as it was on previous models.

And it’s great.

LDS technology is currently the best alternative to robotic vacuums.

The main advantage of the LDS navigation is that the robot does its job perfectly even in the dark .

So, if necessary, you can ask OZMO 950 to clean your house at night.

Ecovacs robot vacuum cleaner sensor LDS is located in the «laser tower».

The laser tower has a bumper so collisions are registered. The suction robot now knows that there is an obstacle and looks for another way.

The laser tower is literally the «head» of the robot.

It constantly measures the area and is responsible for accurate mapping.

Now Deebot OZMO 950 can move around your apartment systematically and according to plan.

Operation Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 is very structured. First, the robot vacuum cleaner runs along the side walls of the room, and then starts cleaning inside the room using normal zigzag movements.

The vacuum cleaner moves around your house quite quickly.

During our tests, the robot vacuum cleaner took just 41 minutes to clean an 80 m² apartment (cleaning area 40 m²).

From time to time Deebot OZMO 950 allows itself a small pause for reflection. He stops for a few seconds and orients himself. But then the journey continues. Without these breaks, a navigation time of less than 40 minutes would have been possible in our apartment.

Despite the maximum speed, no part of the apartment was left unattended.

In our experience this is a very good result. When it comes to navigation, the Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 is absolutely in the big leagues!

Obstacle detection

Thanks to laser navigation technology, all types of large furniture are marked on the map , and OZMO 950 moves skillfully and safely around the room.

Overall, the detection of obstacles is very accurate and objects of the environment are skilfully avoided.

However, if the robot cleaner encounters an obstacle, it reacts quickly with the contact sensors . They are located behind the bumper.

We have noticed that the bumper is used quite often and sometimes quite «roughly». Lighter objects could be moved around a bit.

But light «blows » are completely harmless . The high quality bumper protects the robot and especially your environment from damage.

In addition, we could observe how the OZMO 950 slammed the doors from time to time. Unfortunately, he ended up locked in a room.

Our advice : it only happened once. If you often observe this, we advise you to use a door stopper. This will solve the problem 100%.

OZMO 950 on Yandex *

Dimensions, design and weight of the suction robot Deebot OZMO 950

Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 has an overall round shape. It hasn’t changed.

Robot vacuum cleaner weighs about 4.5 kg .

OZMO 950 has a diameter of 35 cm and a height of 9.3 cm .

Robots of this design are produced with a height of about 10 cm. This means that the OZMO 950 is slightly shorter than many of its competitors.

This (seemingly small) difference in height can be costly. She made it possible for us to vacuum under all the furniture.

On a purely visual level, the OZMO 950 also looks better than most of its competitors.

OZMO 950 is only available in black . It also looks absolutely high quality and elegant.

However, the robot vacuum cleaner also gets covered with dust quite quickly, which is noticeable on black, and must be cleaned once a week with a cloth.

In addition, the surface has been improved. Unlike many other robotic vacuum cleaners, has a matte finish on . Even though it’s still made of plastic, it looks like a high quality carbon fiber finish.

When you lift the lid, the excellent quality of the OZMO 950 is immediately visible. It looks very noble (you might think that the manufacturer used a textile fabric here).

The dust container is located under the hood as usual. Also, the red on/off button can be found here. You can also see the WLAN control indicator.

There is also brush cleaning tool . So it is always at hand and will not get lost.

This is a very reasonable measure. This way you have the right tool to carry out the necessary maintenance work.

If you turn the robot cleaner, you will see:

All important components (brushes, side brushes, rollers and water tank, including a cleaning cloth) are located in designated areas.

In conclusion, we can say that there is no reason to complain about the design and workmanship.

The manufacturer provides us with a quality product .

Ecovacs Charging Station Deebot OZMO 950

The Charging Station is quite small and looks very well built (height: 9 cm x length: 16 cm x depth: 12 cm).

Please place the Ecovacs Deebot OZMO 950 charging station in the apartment, in a free space. There should be about 50-60 cm of free space on the right and left and about 1.5 m in front.

The suction robot needs this space to dock with the charging station.

OZMO 950 on Yandex*

More about the topic

OZMO 950 Height: Navigation under objects

As with laser navigation technology, the OZMO 950 also features the typical «navigation tower».

This means that the suction robot at its highest point has a height of 9.3 cm .

This height makes the Deebot OZMO 950 one of the most flat robotic vacuum cleaners with LDS navigation technology.

With LDS navigation technologies, a slight increase in altitude is a must. In return, you get the best and most reliable navigation technology currently available on the robotic vacuum market.

And yet, Ecovacs robots are still relatively low compared to others.

To avoid negative surprises, we recommend measuring the height under your furniture.

We were very pleasantly surprised by the fact that the OZMO 950 also vacuumed under the curtains. Apparently the smart au pair figured out that the curtains posed no danger to the LDS navigation tower.

Bumpers in laser tower

Bumper inserted in LDS navigation tower. This protects the laser navigation tower from collisions.

OZMO 950 detects abysses?

You don’t have to worry about finding a hole. OZMO 950 now has fall sensors (6 pieces), and therefore the robot is 100% safe from falls.

However, always keep these sensors clean. We recommend cleaning the drop sensors once a month.

Is the remote control included in the package?

Separate remote control not included. In our opinion, for many functions of a modern robot vacuum cleaner, there is no longer a need for a remote control.

Considering how many functions this smart home assistant contains, a conventional remote control would be completely overwhelmed.

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About us

We are a team of smart home enthusiasts and test the best and most popular smart home products for you. Our mission is to provide you with the best and independent advice.

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Overview of Microsoft Lumia 950 Dual SIM with mobile Windows 10

In 2010, Microsoft announced its first, after Windows Mobile 6.5, Windows Phone 7 Series mobile operating system. Literally immediately, the name was shortened to Windows Phone 7, because it was too long. From this alone, one could understand that there are contradictions within Microsoft about mobile products. At that time, internal competition was indeed encouraged in the company, and very often one team could not know what the other was doing. Be that as it may, the history of modern Microsoft mobile operating systems began with this. Its next important stage is happening right now, because after a year and a half of silence, the company has released new flagship smartphones. And they no longer work on Windows Phone, but on the mobile version of Windows 10. The Lumia 9 smartphone came to our editors50 Dual SIM, let’s use its example to see if Microsoft can oust its competitors and what the new OS is capable of.

ZMIST

1 Supply set

2 Design and materials

3 Display

4 Platform and performance

5 Windows 10

5.1

5. 1.1 Browser EDGE

9000 5.1.2 Mail and calendar OUTLOOK OUTLOOK
5.1.3 Skype integration

5.1.4 OneNote

5.1.5 Maps

5.1.6 Microsoft Office

5.1.7 Keyboard

5.1.8 Working with Google

5.1.9 third -party applications

5.1.10 mobile Windows 10

9000 9000

000 6 Continuum 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 7

8 Autonomy

9 As a result

9.10034 The Lumia 950 Dual SIM comes with a USB Type-C charger and a separate USB Type-C to USB cable.

Design and materials

The Lumia 950 Dual SIM looks typical of the latest models of the line and can hardly be classified as a flagship in appearance. There is nothing interesting in the design of the smartphone, and it looks frankly boring, to say the least. This contrasts especially against the pleasant design of the Lumia 930.

The case materials in the 950 have also changed not for the better, the case of the novelty is completely plastic. At the same time, the coating of the back cover is not even a soft touch, it is simply matte.

The only advantage of the plastic case can be called a removable cover, which gives access to the battery, as well as two slots for Nano SIM and one microSD.

The front panel of the smartphone covers the protective glass Corning Gorilla Glass 3 with an oleophobic coating.

No matter how you look at the Lumia 950, it’s hard to see it as a flagship smartphone. One gets the impression that this design was developed four years ago at Nokia, and at Microsoft they simply decided not to throw away what they bought for nothing.

Display

The Lumia 950 Dual SIM is a 5.2-inch display with a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels, making it the first smartphone from Microsoft to achieve a pixel density of 564 dpi. The minimum display brightness is 12.9 cd/m2 and the maximum brightness is 455 cd/m2. As with past Lumia flagships, the new model uses an AMOLED matrix, which allows you to customize the display using the built-in tools.

However, the factory calibration is already well done. The color gamut of the screen exceeds sRGB, although not as much as is usually the case with AMOLED. The average gamma is at level — 2. Color temperature — 7000K.

The use of an AMOLED matrix allowed Microsoft to keep the Lumia 950 Dual SIM display completely turned off after a lock, and display the time, date, calendar events and alerts on it. This is really convenient and does not consume much battery, although this feature can be turned off for even more savings.

In general, the screen in the Lumia 950 Dual SIM is what you would expect from a flagship. And if not everyone will like the design of the smartphone, then at least the display will not disappoint.

Platform and performance

Like a number of flagships in 2015, Lumia 950 Dual SIM received a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 6-core processor with a frequency of 1.8 GHz, 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal memory, which can be expanded with microSD cards.

Despite the processor being «colder» than the Snapdragon 810, the Lumia 950 Dual SIM manages to noticeably heat up. Even in not very resource-intensive tasks, the case temperature can reach 45 degrees Celsius. In addition, the smartphone heats up during charging.

Snapdragon 808 performance and 3 GB of RAM should be more than enough for a modern smartphone. But, apparently, the poor optimization of mobile Windows 10 crosses out all the merits of Qualcomm. The OS interface slows down, the animation is not always smooth, and even light applications start with a noticeable delay.

Windows 10

The idea with which Microsoft decided to actively return to the smartphone market is inherently remarkable. The company is developing a single Windows 10 platform that runs on desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone and Xbox One. At the same time, developers get the necessary tools to create universal applications for the new OS, which can be scaled to different resolutions. Sounds very tempting, right? In fact, of course, Windows 10 on Lumia 950 Dual SIM and Windows 10 on your computer are not the same system at all, although they do have a lot in common, both in code and in interface. And developers can indeed create universal applications for this platform, but so far the most active player in this field is still only Microsoft itself. Although we must pay tribute, the company is doing quite well.

Interface

The mobile version of Windows 10, although it is a completely different OS, has retained quite a lot in common with Windows Phone. The main screen of the system still consists of tiles, which can be of three sizes. With the largest tile display option, additional information can also appear on it as on a widget.

Tiles can now be sorted into folders, which significantly reduces the size of the tape, which for some Windows Phone users reached a truly monstrous size.

Another important innovation is that the battery and network connection indicator is now permanently displayed at the top of the screen.

Swiping down from the top edge of the screen opens a curtain with notifications, as well as quick access to settings.

The main menu is still on the left, you have to swipe from right to left to access it.

The bottom navigation bar can now be hidden with a swipe from top to bottom, and shown by swiping backwards. But it works so far only in the interface itself and system applications.

The navigation bar itself, as in previous versions, contains three buttons: back, Windows, and search. In Ukrainian localization, the search button opens Yandex and this cannot be changed in the settings, even if you change the default search in the browser.

Settings in Windows 10 mobile are drawn in the same style as in the standard version of the OS. They are divided into categories, and contain enough detailed items that allow you to customize the system to your needs.

Multitasking mode is displayed as open windows. To close them, you can use the cross on each of them, or pull each one down. In this case, if you pull the window up, then nothing will happen. Apparently, Microsoft considered that it was not right to close windows in this way.

All in all, five years later, the mobile version of Windows still looks fresh, and it’s actually more user-friendly. But Microsoft’s desire to do things differently from its competitors just knocks the ground out from under the feet of Android and iOS users, whose developers have been copying each other for a long time. Thus, Microsoft again turned out to be an original mobile operating system, but in some moments of the interface one really wants the company to release developers to play with Android and iOS.

Edge Browser

One example of Microsoft’s desire to do things differently is the new Edge browser. It has the address input line at the bottom, and not at the top as in mobile Safari and Chrome.

Not that it’s too inconvenient, but considering that even in the desktop Edge it’s on top, this arrangement is not very logical. With the exception of this slight dissonance in design, the browser turned out to be quite good.

It loads pages quickly, it has a «reader mode», support for syncing bookmarks with desktop Edge, and a download manager.

Outlook mail and calendar

The built-in email application of the new OS is called Outlook, but in terms of its functionality it is still closer to the standard mail program from Windows 10. Only the name is from the desktop Outlook. Although in general, the capabilities of the mobile Windows 10 mail client are higher than in Windows Phone. It added advanced formatting options, as well as convenient work with attachments. However, the app formats emails a bit oddly, and there’s no way to merge two accounts into one mailbox.

Along with Outlook mail, Windows 10 mobile has a calendar of the same name. It is also an almost complete copy of the calendar in desktop Windows 10. The functionality of this program is standard, you can add events to the calendar with the time, place, and invitation of participants.

Google Mail and Calendar users can easily connect their account to Windows 10 mobile. All you need to do is enter your username and password. Afterwards it works just fine.

Skype integration

As with the latest Windows 10 desktop update, the mobile version has a Messages app that supports both SMS, MMS, and Skype.

Accordingly, there is no need to install the Skype application separately, the service is already integrated into the system. The same applies to video calls.

OneNote

The app for Microsoft’s popular note-taking service has also been updated in Windows 10 mobile. However, the main changes are more about interface design than functionality.

You can still add text notes, lists, images to OneNote. As for the interface, it has become closer to Windows 10.

Maps

The mobile version of Windows 10 integrates quite good maps from HERE, which can be downloaded for offline use.

The maps display traffic jams on the streets of Kyiv, car and pedestrian navigation, as well as public transport.

Microsoft Office

The built-in applications of the Microsoft Office suite (Word, Excel, Power Point) are a simplified version of desktop programs.

They don’t support complex formatting, but they do allow you to create and edit Microsoft Office documents.

Keyboard

Built into the mobile version of Windows 10, the virtual keyboard took everything from Windows Phone, and was supplemented with some innovations. The size of the keyboard can be changed, it can be large, medium and small. The last two points can only be useful for larger smartphones, they look too small on the Lumia 950 Dual SIM.

Typing on the Windows 10 keyboard is comfortable, the keys are large enough, there is text prediction and the ability to enter text with a swipe. Another interesting innovation in the keyboard is a small dot between the keys, which, when held, turns into a joystick, and allows you to more comfortably move the cursor over the text.

Working with Google services

Despite the fact that a Windows 10 mobile user can connect Google mail and calendar without any problems, otherwise there are no official programs from the company for this platform. Except for the Google search app for Windows Phone, which hasn’t been updated since 2013.

Thus, for mobile Windows 10 there is no official YouTube, no Google Maps, no Google Photo, no Google Music. You will have to look for applications for these services in solutions from third-party developers, and most often they are paid.

Third-party apps

In general, the selection of apps in the Store on Windows 10 mobile is nowhere near as wide as on Android and iOS. And some applications have not been updated for several years. Due to Windows Phone’s small market share, developers didn’t see the point in writing for it, focusing on Android and iOS.

Universal apps under Windows 10 could solve the problem, because they can work not only on a smartphone, but also on laptops and desktops, where the Microsoft operating system is still the most popular. However, there are no signs yet that this will actually happen. In any case, for now, the owner of a smartphone with Windows 10 will not be able to get new programs and games that today are almost synchronously released for Android or iOS.

Glitches in Windows 10 Mobile

Unfortunately, the current version of Windows 10 for smartphones is not completely stable, at least on the Lumia 950 Dual SIM.

The operating system sometimes slows down, does not draw some interface elements (especially often the background in the menu), and also reboots. It is possible that some or all of the glitches of this build will be fixed, but for now, using Windows 10 on the Lumia 950 Dual SIM, you involuntarily feel like a beta tester.

Continuum

One of the highlights of Microsoft’s new flagship smartphones is Continuum, a new feature that lets you turn your smartphone into something like a computer.

Continuum requires a dedicated Microsoft Display Dock that connects to the Lumia 950 via USB Type C and to the monitor via HDMI or Display Port. When connected, the smartphone recognizes the docking station and offers to launch the Continuum mode, rebuilding its interface to match the monitor’s display resolution (which, by the way, can be up to 4K).

Thus, on the screen, the user sees a kind of Windows 10 desktop interface and even with the Start button. But in fact, it’s really just a mobile interface that scales to fit the monitor’s resolution.

Accordingly, the applications that are available in Continuum mode are not analogous to programs from Windows 10. Microsoft calls them “universal”, meaning that they can work on different Windows 10 devices and adapt to different screen sizes.

In practice, there are practically no such «universal» applications from third-party developers, so you have to be content with standard ones from Microsoft. In fact, this is not so bad, the user has the Edge browser with a desktop-like interface, Outlook mail, Skype messages, the ability to edit documents in Microsoft Office.

The Display Dock has three USB ports that allow you to connect a mouse and keyboard to the Display Dock. But other than that, after connecting to the docking station, the display of the Lumia 950 itself turns into a pretty good touchpad, and the smartphone’s virtual keyboard can be used for input.

It all looks promising until you try connecting your Lumia 950 to a monitor and doing some normal work task. For example, look at the information on the site, add it to the document and send it by mail. And here you immediately encounter the biggest problem of Continuum — the performance of the smartphone is not enough to comfortably work in the mobile interface of Windows 10 on a Full HD monitor.

Even with a fast connection, sites take a very long time to load, and the system itself slows down when switching between windows, even if only three programs are open: browser, mail and Word. As a result, you catch yourself thinking that it is much faster and more comfortable to open a laptop or start a computer than to suffer with Continuum. This mode could be useful if it could be used to solve situational problems. Let’s say you need to give a client an important presentation, and the laptop just broke down. Here we, of course, get out of the pocket of Lumia 950 and connect it to the TV. Hooray, presentation saved. But in reality, it is unlikely that you will just carry around a rather heavy docking station for Continuum. After all, this is more of a stationary solution, which is unlikely to be at hand at the right time. One could, of course, assume that someone might immediately want to go to a presentation with a docking station and show it from the Lumia 950. But in this case, do not forget that the smartphone has a stripped-down mobile Microsoft Office installed and everything is shown as on the desktop.

In conclusion, it is important to note that Continuum is certainly an interesting solution, but its implementation leaves much to be desired. Perhaps in the future, when the performance of smartphones is higher, there will be more «universal» applications for Windows, and a separate docking station will not be needed for connection, then Continuum can be considered as an easy replacement for a PC. But for now, this feature is unlikely to become popular among Lumia 950 users, especially considering that the docking station must be purchased separately.

Camera

Lumia smartphones got Microsoft with one very important advantage — good cameras. At one time, Nokia seriously invested in the development of PureView technology and cooperation with Zeiss. It’s nice that Microsoft didn’t bury it all. The Lumia 950 Dual SIM uses a 20-megapixel photomodule with f/1.9 aperture and 6-lens optics. In automatic mode, the camera demonstrates good quality and detail of pictures.

Auto in good light: 950 Dual SIM demonstrates the usual autonomy for smartphones, you have to charge the device every day.

As a result

If Windows Phone still has fans, they will definitely be happy with mobile Windows 10, the system has become a little better, and it has more potential for development than in all past years. But for everyone else, buying a Lumia 950 or the Dual SIM version discussed in this review will not be the best solution. The smartphone cannot offer anything for its money that other models would not have, but at the same time it has a worse design and a raw OS, for which there are no most popular applications. The Continuum feature was interesting only on paper, for now it’s just a demonstration of what smartphones can become in the future. But while she is not able to turn Lumia 950 into the computer. Microsoft should reconsider its strategy in the smartphone market, the release of expensive models of the company only worsens its position. Users would be ready to endure all the hardships of the mobile version of Windows 10, but only if the cost of Microsoft smartphones is adequate.

Liked:

+ Display
+ Camera
+ microSD card slot

Disliked:

— Design and materials
— Casing heating
— Windows 10 glitches
— Few third-party apps
— Continuum is not useful yet
— Overpriced

The editors express their gratitude to the online store Reader.ua for providing the device for review

Microsoft Lumia 950 Dual Sim (Black)

Notify when available

Type Smartphone

SIM card type Nano SIM

Standard GSM 850/900/1800/1900; WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100; FDD-LTE 2100(1)/1900(2)/1800(3)/1700(4)/850(5)/2600(7)/900(8)/(700(12)/700(17)/800 (20)/700(28)

High speed data transfer GPRS, EDGE, HSPA, HSPA+ (UL up to 5. 76 Mbps / DL up to 42.2 Mbps), FDD-LTE Cat.6 (DL up to 300 Mbps)

Number of SIM cards 2

Operating system Windows 10

RAM, GB 3

Built-in memory, GB 32

Expansion slot microSD/SDHC/SDXC (up to 200 GB)

Dimensions, mm 145×73.2×8.2

Weight g 150

Dust and moisture protection —

Battery 3000 mAh (removable)

Operating time (manufacturer’s data) Talk time: up to 23 hours (2G), Standby time: up to 288 hours

Diagonal, inches 5.2

Approval 2560×1440

Matrix type AMOLED

PPI 564

Dimming sensor +

Touch screen (type) touch (capacitive)

Other Corning Gorilla Glass 3

Processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 + GPU Adreno 418

Core type Cortex-A57 + Cortex-A53

Number of cores 2+4

Frequency, GHz 1. 8

Main camera, MP 20

Autofocus +

Video 3840×2160 pixels, 30 fps

Flash double LED

Front camera MP 5

Other 1080p front camera video recording

WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, WiFi hotspot

Bluetooth 4.1

GPS + (A-GLONASS, A-GPS)

IrDA —

NFC +

Interface connector USB 3.1 (Type C)

Audio connector 3.5 mm

MP3 player +

FM radio n/a

Housing type monoblock (dismountable)

Body material plastic

Keyboard type screen input

Another proximity and light sensors, barometer, gyroscope, accelerometer, magnetometer

characteristics, performance — Sewing Advisor.

General characteristics

Machine type

overlock

needle system

130/705H

Number of operations

15

Rolled hem

Yes

Cover stitch

no

Types of seams

2/3/4 thread

Sewing materials

fine, medium, heavy, extra heavy

Chain stitch

no

Stitch length mm

1-4

Joint width, mm

3-7

Upper looper converter

yes

Automatic needle threader

no

Lower looper easy threading

Yes

Knife drive position

top

Max. presser foot lift, mm

8

Differential feed

have

Presser foot pressure adjustment

Yes

Engine lock

no

Removable arm console

no

Waste collector

no

Maximum sewing speed, sti/min

1500

Power, W

90

Illumination type

LED

Weight, kg

8.2

Country of origin

Japan

Item condition

new

Assembly country

China

Warranty

60 months

Contents:

Operations

Reliability

Usability

Stitch test

Noise

Operations

The number of operations for an overlock is a conditional concept, because. There are no switches themselves. You can get the look you want by threading the threads and loopers in different sequences. Let’s highlight 9 basic seams that are most often used for sewing.

4-thread overlock with reinforcement stitch

3-thread wide overlock

3-thread narrow overlock

2-thread wide flatlock

2-thread narrow flatlock

3-thread rolled hem

2-thread rolled hem

3-thread flatlock

20005

Equipment

This model comes standard.

Standard included

Standard foot (mounted on overlocker)

Convector (upper looper converter)

Spool holder caps (bobbins or pressure plates) (4 pcs)

Tweezers

Cleaning brush/needle inserter

Spool screen (2 pcs)

Anti-vibration cones (4 pcs)
Set of needles 130/705H — No. 70/10 — 2 pcs., No. 80/12 — 3 pcs.

Screwdriver, small

Oiler

Accessory bag

Case

Instruction manual

Pedal

Complete set may differ depending on the supply

Reliability

The design of the Juki B 950 overlock uses a metal frame.

Specified input power 105 W.

Subtracting the 10W incandescent bulb leaves 95W for the motor. This power is quite enough to process various types of fabrics on this model.

Ease of use

Ease of overlock threading

If you pull back the looper cover, you will see a colored threading pattern.

Each thread is drawn in a different color and numbered (the number indicates the order in which the thread should be threaded). The color of the thread corresponds to the color of the thread in the figure above the sliders (levers) for adjusting the thread tension on the body of the overlocker.

This model has a lower looper threader. It makes it very easy to thread the lower looper.

Adjustments

On the front panel of the overlock there are sliders (levers) of the thread tensioners. This type of thread tensioner is resistant to vibration and guarantees a perfect seam.

On the right side there is a stitch length dial (from 1 to 4 mm). 2.5mm is the standard length or most commonly used for overlocking.

Underneath is the differential feed switch. N — normal tissue feed or value 1. Value greater than N — fabric fit, less than N — stretching. The differential fabric motor prevents wrinkling or waviness in knitted or stretch fabrics, and vice versa, it can powerfully create beautiful decorative wave effects. Always do a dry run. The differential motor is continuously variable and can be adjusted while sewing.

The stitch (cut) adjuster is located on the left side under the work platform. Open the work platform (move to the left). Raise the presser foot. Move the upper knife to the right and turn the overedge width screw in the desired direction. Seam width from 3 to 7 mm.

Top knife attachment is considered more professional and efficient. Its advantages include a quick and convenient shutdown (you need to press the holder of the upper knife to the right and turn the head away from you until you hear a click and the knife falls into place), it is easier to cut the fabric and the self-sharpening system of the blades works better. But there is also a minus of this arrangement — slightly restricts access to the needles, it is not very convenient to thread the needles.

The Juki B950 has a top knife position.

To make a rolled hem, move the spreader to position R and set the desired looper thread tension. The thread tension of the lower looper is increased, and the upper looper is left the same or slightly loosened. The stitch length is set to R. Be sure to make a test pattern and adjust the tension depending on the fabric before starting to work the edge with a rolled hem.

Juki B 950 can also be used as a twin thread. To do this, the kit includes an upper looper converter (converter). The converter is attached to the upper looper arm. The wire hook is inserted into the eye of the upper looper from the back. Now the upper looper does not lead the thread, but takes it away from the lower looper so that the loops are formed around the side edge of the fabric.

The presser foot pressure regulator is located on top of the overlock body. The factory setting is a medium value, but if you want to adjust it to suit your fabric, simply turn the knob in the desired direction. Clockwise — we strengthen (thick, dense fabrics), counterclockwise — we weaken (light, thin fabric, knitwear).

Sewing test

Organza (2-thread rolled hem) — Excellent

Organza (3-thread rolled hem) — Excellent

Jeans (4-thread overlock stitch with reinforcement stitch) — Excellent

Knitwear (3/4 thread super stretch stitch) — Excellent

The test was carried out on a universal foot and without additional materials and devices.

I would like to note that the model Juki B 950 does not knock, sews smoothly, does not twitch. Showed a fairly soft and silent move.

Noise

The sound level meter showed the standard values for household overlockers — 71.