I used CrystalDiskMark to benchmark the hard drive that came with my laptop versus a Samsung EVO 850 SSD I purchased to speed up the laptop’s disk performance.
As you can see it is very clear the SSD beats the 5400 RPM HDD that came with the laptop. With the original HDD the laptop had slow startup and shutdown times and was slow to start applications. With the SSD, startup, shutdown and loading applications is almost instantaneous. This made the experience of using the laptop so much better. Upgrading to an SSD is a great upgrade that I would recommend to anyone.
Cris Conner's SQL Blog 