Samsung 860 QVO SSD Review Discussion

[Adam_a 24]

Samsung entered the QLC race today with its 860 QVO. The drive comes in capacities ranging from 1TB to 4TB. The 860 QVO leverages Samsung’s 4-bit MLC V-NAND and SATA interface. QLC promises more density at a lower costs but can come with a performance hit. To keep performance up with its 3-bit NAND drives, Samsung leverages the same MJX controller promising read speeds of 550MB/s and write speeds of 520MB/s. The drive comes with a 3-year limited warranty and can be bought for slightly under what the Intel QLC is being sold for, though the later leverages NVMe interface. 

 

 

 

Samsung 860 QVO SSD Review

 

[continuum 18]

Any comparisons to SATA TLC drives, given the price points, especially on DRAM-less SATA TLC drives, are currently similar?

[Brian 157]

The testing methodology is a little different, we debated putting the 860 EVO on for instance, but it's apples to apples with a bite missing so we opted not to. You could pull the reviews side by side to compare with the understanding the QLC drives are tested more gently.

[larus 0]

Why QLC drives are treated more gently? What's the reason? To not to show how crap they might be? Real-world users will use them differently than MLC or TLC drives at home? I can't understand.

[Kevin OBrien 58]

21 hours ago, larus said:

Why QLC drives are treated more gently? What's the reason? To not to show how crap they might be? Real-world users will use them differently than MLC or TLC drives at home? I can't understand.

There is no doubt they suffer under heavy or sustained write workloads, each manufacturer will tell you that from the start. They are really designed for micro workloads or read environments, which these tests are designed to show. For people looking at smaller workload footprints, the smaller benchmarks help more than showing a drive performing poorly in an area it was never designed to go into.