Best SSD for XPS 13 9350?

Ordered a 128GB FHD version for university because I wanted the additional battery life the non-touch has over the touch screen QHD; however, I want at least 256GB of storage and was looking to replace the stock SSD.

Looking at the options it appears I have a couple options. The 950 Pro looks like it's the current best available, but I'm wondering what kind of effect it will have on my battery life as the reviews I've seen show its idle consumption to be waaaay higher than any other SSD. The SM951 also seems to be regarded highly, with little difference between human perceivable real world performance and battery life with the AHCI model having a bit less power consumption issues as the NVMe based SSDs per the reviews I can find.

If I wanted a balance between performance and battery life, would the SM951 AHCI be my best bet? Can anybody who uses the 950 Pro or SM951 NVMe chime in on if they are really as bad of energy hogs as the reviews are showing them to be?

Thanks!

 

I'm on the 950pro. And to be honest, there is no Real reason, to drop the 951. both are pretty fast. I dont feel a different, while doing Video editing. I just See a small difference if I use Tools to measure the I/O.

The 4K Display is topnotch and with the bigger battery I can do +/- 10h of regular Office work and surfing. When I Work with power demanding Apps, the Device is plugged to power.

 

I believe the stock ssd is a PM951... The only reason I am looking at the SM and 950 Pro is I want a larger ssd (my xps has the lower capacity 128gb ssd).

I ordered the 950 pro, I guess if I'm going to upgrade might as well get the "best" one available. Hopefully I get similar battery life, I won't be using anything too demanding, mostly Microsoft office and some nursing charting simulation software.

 

That's the upgrade I'm contemplating. Apparently a BIOS update fixed the battery issues with the NVME drives. Do report back if you find your battery life dropping though.

 

The 950 pro should be here Wednesday, laptop gets here Thursday. First thing I'm doing is pulling out the stock SSD and wifi card, putting in the 950 and a 8260 and doing a clean install. I'll report what kind of battery life I get as a result.

 

while it doesn't totally relate, I noticed no difference in battery life going from a PM951 to my 950 Pro.

 

I figure if I pull the PM951 right away, I'll never notice a difference because I'll be use to the 950 Pro from the get!

 

Little surprise, apparently the model I purchased didn't even have a Samsung PM951 to start out with -- looks like a SanDisk Z400s M.2 2280. Pretty dismal speeds from the stats I found, 546 read/182 write.

Installing a clean install of Windows 10 now.

 

Yeah the 128GB drives aren't NVMe drives. I've got the same one, and I'm planning to do the 950 upgrade when prices come down a little.

 

I'm in process of draining the battery to charge it to give it an accurate calibration -- the estimated time of how much battery it has is.... inconsistant at best. Jumps from 12 hours to 8 hours, now it's telling me that 67% life left is only 2 hours of juice.

If this thing only gets three hours of use on a full charge, it's going back to Best Buy.

edit:

Decided I'll hold on to it until the 9360 Kaby Lake models hit early next month then return it before the 30 day period is up and order a 7th generation CPU version -- they advertise a 22 hour battery life, which translated from promotional material language might translate into a usable battery lifespan I was expecting from the 9350.

 

I bought my 9350 through the outlet shop. It is an i5 8GB ram 128GB SSD and QHD touch.
I needed more room so I have upgraded the SSD. I had planned to use a Samsung 950 pro but I guess they are too power hungry and meant for desktops. Please see my attached Crystal Diskmarks. I added a Samsung SM951 MZ-VPV5120 512GB M.2 SSD NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 Gen3 and I'm well satisfied with the results. I read a lot of comments about fan noise. I've not noticed it and just did a bit of gaming and was able to put my ear up to the bottom and I could hear the fan running. I was starting to worry. Love the machine! I did the SSD upgrade by just changing the Bios setting from Raid to ACHI, then I booted from my standard Windows 10 flash drive. Windows pulled the product key from the Bios and installed Windows 10 Pro X64 I did need to download the wifi driver from Dell and once it was up I just went to Dell for the rest of the drivers. Bye Bye bloatware!