To be available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, the Samsung 980 (non-Pro) is the direct successor of the previously available 970 EVO, bringing similar performance levels at lower price points.

The Samsung 980 is based on Samsung's Pablo controller with four NAND channels, paired up with Samsung's own 512Gbit 128-layer 3D TLC NAND. It is based on a standard M.2 2280 form-factor and uses PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface with NVMe 1.4 protocol.

The controller in the Samsung 980 comes without DRAM cache and all of this was enough for peak sequential performance of 3,500MB/s for read and 3,000MB/s for write on the 1TB version. The random 4K performance peaks at 500K IOPS for read and 480K IOPS for write. The 250GB and 500GB have slightly lower performance, peaking at 2,900/1,300MB/s and 3,100/2,600MB/s, with 4K random performance hitting 230K/320K IOPS and 400K/470K IOPS, respectively.

The Samsung 980 SSD lineup has a write endurance of 0.3DWPD or 150TBW for 250GB, 300TBW for the 500GB, and 600TBW for the 1TB model.

The price of the Samsung 980 is set at $49.99 for the 250GB, $69.99 for the 500GB, and $129.99 for the 1TB version, giving the series a rather affordable price-per-GB (13c/GB for the 1TB model).

This is not Samsung's first venture into an entry-level SSD market as it had QLC QVO SATA SSDs before and introducing a non-Pro version now gives Samsung a bit more room on the market, with a possible introduction of the EVO version at a later date.