Samsung 990 Pro 4TB Review: Why This Gen4 NVMe Still Destroys Gen5 Drives for Content Creators

Samsung just dropped a 4TB bomb on the NVMe market, and here’s the kicker — it might make the brand-new Samsung 990 Pro 4TB more relevant than the flashy Gen5 drives everyone’s been drooling over. While the Samsung 9100 Pro launched last month with eye-popping 14,800 MB/s sequential reads, content creators are quietly reaching for this Gen4 workhorse instead. I’ve been testing it in my production workflows, and the results tell a story that spec sheets simply can’t.

Samsung 990 Pro 4TB Specs: Single-Sided 4TB That Actually Fits Everywhere

Let’s get the numbers out of the way because they matter — but not in the way you might think. The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB delivers 7,450 MB/s sequential reads and 6,900 MB/s sequential writes over a PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 interface. Random performance hits 1,600K IOPS read and 1,550K IOPS write. Samsung packed their V8 TLC NAND and in-house Pascal controller into this drive, backed by a generous 4GB LPDDR4 DRAM cache and a 2,400 TBW endurance rating with a 5-year warranty.

But here’s what actually sets this drive apart: it’s the world’s only single-sided 4TB M.2 2280 SSD with onboard DRAM. That single-sided design isn’t just a bragging right — it means this drive fits in laptops, PS5 consoles, and compact workstations where double-sided drives simply won’t go. If you’ve ever tried cramming a thick 4TB NVMe into a MacBook Pro’s tight M.2 slot or a mini-ITX build, you know exactly why this matters.

Real-World Performance: Where the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB Shines for Video Editors

Synthetic benchmarks are one thing. Actual production workflows are another. StorageReview’s testing showed the 990 Pro 4TB hitting 5,917 MB/s write and 5,758 MB/s read in Blackmagic Disk Speed Test — numbers that comfortably handle 8K RAW video editing in DaVinci Resolve and multi-stream 4K ProRes workflows in Premiere Pro without breaking a sweat.

For content creators working with large media files, the 4TB capacity is the real game-changer. A single 8K RED RAW project can easily consume 500GB-1TB of storage. With the 990 Pro 4TB, you can keep two or three active projects on a single fast drive without constantly shuffling files to external storage. That alone saves hours per week in a busy production environment.

Tom’s Hardware awarded the drive 4.5 out of 5 stars, calling it the best Gen4 SSD that “just got bigger.” Their testing confirmed it as the fastest high-capacity Gen4 drive available, outpacing competitors like the WD Black SN850X 4TB (7,300 MB/s sequential read) and the SK Hynix Platinum P41 by a meaningful margin in sustained write scenarios.

PCIe Gen4 vs Gen5 for Content Creation: The Math That Nobody’s Doing

The Samsung 9100 Pro launched in April 2025 with PCIe Gen5 speeds up to 14,800 MB/s. On paper, that’s nearly double the 990 Pro 4TB. So why would anyone choose the “slower” drive?

Three reasons that matter in practice:

• Price reality: The 9100 Pro 4TB costs roughly twice what the 990 Pro 4TB commands at its current ~$300 street price ($344.99 MSRP). For creators running multiple workstations or building NAS scratch disks, that cost difference multiplies fast.
• Thermal management: Gen5 drives run significantly hotter under sustained workloads. In a laptop or a compact editing rig, thermal throttling can erase those theoretical speed advantages within minutes of sustained 8K timeline scrubbing.
• Platform compatibility: Many current workstations, especially Apple Silicon Macs and older Intel/AMD systems, still run PCIe Gen4. Paying for Gen5 speeds on a Gen4 bus is literally burning money.

The reality is that most content creation bottlenecks happen at the CPU, GPU, or RAM level — not at storage I/O. The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB’s 7,450 MB/s reads are already faster than what most NLE software can actually consume in real time. You’re more likely to hit a CPU encoding bottleneck in Premiere Pro or a GPU render ceiling in After Effects long before the 990 Pro becomes your limiting factor.

Head-to-Head: Samsung 990 Pro 4TB vs the Competition

The high-capacity Gen4 NVMe space has gotten crowded, but the 990 Pro 4TB stands out for specific reasons. TweakTown’s benchmark suite showed the 990 Pro running approximately 20% faster than competing Gen4 SSDs across mixed workloads, earning top scores in both 3DMark and PCMark storage tests.

Here’s how it stacks up against the main alternatives:

• WD Black SN850X 4TB (Gen4): Close competitor at 7,300 MB/s sequential read, but the 990 Pro edges it out in random I/O performance — the metric that actually matters for multi-tasking and small file operations during editing sessions.
• Crucial T500 2TB (Gen4): Excellent performance at 7,400 MB/s reads, but maxes out at 2TB. If you need 4TB on a single drive, this isn’t an option.
• SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB (Gen4): Solid budget contender with 7,000 MB/s reads, but again limited to 2TB capacity and lacks the DRAM cache depth of the 990 Pro.
• Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB (Gen5): The speed king at 14,800 MB/s, but roughly double the price. Worth it for dedicated video ingest workstations; overkill for 95% of content creation workflows.

AES 256-Bit Encryption and Enterprise Features Creators Overlook

One underappreciated aspect of the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB is its hardware-based AES 256-bit encryption with TCG/Opal V2.0 support. For freelance creators handling client projects under NDA — think unreleased film trailers, pre-launch product videos, or confidential corporate content — hardware encryption without performance penalty is a legitimate business requirement, not a nice-to-have.

Samsung Magician software also provides health monitoring, firmware updates, and over-provisioning controls. The 2,400 TBW endurance rating means that even writing 100GB per day, this drive will last over 65 years before hitting its rated endurance limit. For a content creator’s scratch disk that sees heavy daily writes, that kind of longevity provides genuine peace of mind.

My Take: Why I’m Buying Two More of These

After 28 years working in music production and audio engineering, I’ve learned one expensive lesson: storage speed matters less than storage reliability and capacity in creative workflows. I’ve lost more project time to “out of disk space” warnings and drive failures than I ever have to slow transfer speeds.

The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB hits a sweet spot I’ve been waiting for. In my studio setup, I use fast NVMe drives as scratch disks for active sessions — audio recording, video editing, and the increasingly large AI model files that modern creative tools demand. The jump from 2TB to 4TB on a single M.2 slot means I can keep my entire current project library on one drive without the external SSD shuffle that eats 15 minutes of every work session.

I tested the 990 Pro 4TB specifically with Pro Tools sessions running 100+ tracks with heavy plugin loads, and DaVinci Resolve timelines mixing 4K ProRes with RAW footage. In both scenarios, the drive never became the bottleneck. The 4GB DRAM cache handles random I/O beautifully — and that’s where creative applications actually stress storage, not in the big sequential transfers that benchmark charts love to highlight.

Could the 9100 Pro’s Gen5 speeds help? Maybe in a dedicated ingest workstation pulling footage from multiple capture cards simultaneously. But for the price of one 9100 Pro 4TB, I can put two 990 Pro 4TB drives in a RAID 0 config and get both higher throughput AND double the capacity. That math is hard to argue with.

The Bottom Line: Who Should Buy the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB

The Samsung 990 Pro 4TB is the storage upgrade that content creators have been waiting for — massive capacity, top-tier Gen4 performance, single-sided design that fits anywhere, and a price point that doesn’t require a second mortgage. If you’re editing 4K or 8K video, running large audio sessions, or working with AI models that demand fast local storage, this is the drive to buy right now.

Skip it only if you’re building a dedicated high-throughput ingest server where Gen5 speeds genuinely make a difference, or if you’re sitting on a PCIe Gen5 platform with budget to burn. For everyone else — and that includes the vast majority of professional content creators — the Samsung 990 Pro 4TB delivers everything you need at a price that makes sense.

In a market obsessed with chasing the fastest spec sheet numbers, the 990 Pro 4TB is a refreshing reminder that the best tool isn’t always the most expensive one — it’s the one that fits your actual workflow.

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