We never expected to see a new NVMe solid state drive (SSD) from Samsung this soon – especially with the 970 Evo and 970 Pro launching just last April – but here we are looking at the new Samsung 970 Evo Plus. The entire NVMe SSD world is engaged in something of a race to the bottom to offer the cheapest and fastest storage, and it seems Samsung has had to bend to market dynamics. Although it might seem like the 970 Evo Plus wasn’t revolutionary enough to earn the name 980 Evo, it’s the first drive from Samsung to introduce its new 96-layer V-NAND. The new form of memory is basically designed to stack higher, and reach higher speeds. Specifically, the 970 Evo Plus is designed to write at 3300MB/s sequential writing speed – far outpacing the 970 Evo, which maxed out at 2,500MB/s, and even the 970 Pro’s top 3,300Mb/s – on sequential writes. Sequential writes remain at 3,500MB/s, but this is basically the gold standard among the fastest SSDs on the market.