Samsung’s Samsung 990 SSD arrived on Samsung’s US store this week, and the 2026 spec sheet has a quality all its own. The Samsung 990 SSD is both more expensive and slower than the 2022 990 Pro it slots underneath.
The Samsung 990 SSD costs $270 for 1TB and $530 for 2TB. That is roughly 50% more than the 2022 Pro at launch. Meanwhile, the 2026 spec sheet undercuts the Pro on every Samsung-published line. As a result, the new drive lands in an awkward spot between value and speed.
How the new 990 stacks up against the 2022 990 Pro
Samsung’s product page lists the new Samsung 990 SSD at 7,250 MB/s sequential reads and 6,450 MB/s sequential writes. Random IOPS come in at 850K reads and 1,200K writes. The 2022 990 Pro, by contrast, posts 7,450 MB/s reads and 6,900 MB/s writes. It also ships 1,400K random reads and 1,550K random writes. The non-Pro lands below the Pro on every Samsung-published number.
For shoppers who already know the 2022 Pro, the IOPS gap is the part that matters. Sequential throughput drives large file copies. Random IOPS, however, drive game load times, app launches, and OS responsiveness. The new Samsung 990 SSD trades the metric most people feel for the metric most spec sheets print.
How the prices line up
The sticker story is the storage crunch that has defined 2026. NAND and DRAM pricing has climbed through the year as AI-driven demand absorbs the same fabs that make consumer SSDs and DRAM. In addition, Samsung is pushing that cost straight onto the shelf. As a consequence, every recent SSD launch has landed at a price bracket that would have looked absurd two years ago.
The 990 Pro has not escaped. Samsung now lists the 1TB Pro at $320 and the 2TB at $640. That 2TB price is more than double the 2TB’s $309 launch price in 2022. Meanwhile, the new Samsung 990 SSD ends up an awkward middle child. The 1TB non-Pro costs $270, but the faster 1TB Pro is only $50 more at $320. The 2TB non-Pro at $530 sits just $110 below the 2TB Pro at $640. There is no obvious reason to choose the non-Pro at the prices Samsung currently lists.
The same NAND and DRAM squeeze is showing up across the storage market. The SanDisk 8TB PS5 SSD we covered last month cleared $700 for a single drive. Meanwhile, Framework’s RAM and SSD lines have now had multiple price-hike notices in a single quarter. As a result, the pattern across consumer storage is the same: capacity costs more, and faster tiers cost disproportionately more.
What the new 990 actually is
Strip the marketing layer and the Samsung 990 SSD reads as a capacity play dressed in the Pro’s visual language. The M.2 2280 stick, the Samsung-branded heat-spreader label, and the 1TB and 2TB capacity ladder all match the 2022 Pro shape. The drop in random IOPS, however, is the most visible regression against the older Pro.
Samsung is pitching the new Samsung 990 SSD at “dependable everyday storage” in the page description. The framing fits the new spec sheet. Sequential throughput holds up against most PCIe 4.0 drives on the market. The price-per-GB math also works out close to current Crucial, WD, and Kingston rivals. However, it is the random-IOPS gap against the 2022 Pro that makes the launch feel like a step sideways rather than forward.
What it means for buyers
If you held off on a 990 Pro in 2022 hoping for a 2026 refresh, the new Samsung 990 SSD is not it. The Pro line still leads Samsung’s own stack. The 2022 Pro at $320 for 1TB, meanwhile, is a better buy today than the non-Pro at $270. As a result, the only reason to pick the non-Pro right now is branding preference or a sale that does not exist yet.
Anyone upgrading from a SATA SSD or an early NVMe drive will see real gains either way. Anyone chasing the 2022 Pro’s random-IOPS ceiling, however, will need to wait for Samsung’s next Pro refresh. Alternatively, current PCIe 5.0 drives from the usual competitors already clear that ceiling today.
Expect the same pricing story to play out across NVMe SSDs and DRAM kits through the rest of 2026. The AI build-out is consuming the same NAND and DRAM lines that feed consumer storage. Component costs are not expected to ease in the near term. As a result, shoppers who need storage now will pay for it. Shoppers who can wait, meanwhile, have a much better case for sitting out this cycle.
