Samsung 870 QVO SSD
A storage SSD?
While NVMe drives get most of the attention these days, there’s still a market for SATA drives that continues to encroach on the mechanical hard drive space. The Samsung 870 QVO is exactly what the doctor ordered as a storage SSD. The problem is that SATA SSDs are almost commodity products. Performance isn’t much of a factor in 2020 so it comes down to other features such as endurance, warranty and of course, pricing. Can Samsung’s second generation QLC drive add another nail in the coffin of mechanical hard drives?
The key characteristic of the 870 QVO is its Quad Level Cell NAND. QLC tends to be slower and typically has a lower endurance rating than the TLC NAND found in many budget-oriented consumer SSDs. Its advantage is its higher density, which should mean better affordability. This higher density is a key, and Samsung is due to release an 8TB 870 QVO.
The 870 QVO is a standard 2.5in SATA 6GB/s SSD. It’s available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and the aforementioned 8TB capacities. It uses Samsung’s own MKX controller. The 1TB 870 QVO features a 1GB DRAM buffer, going up to 2GB for the 2TB version and so on. Samsung includes 256-bit AES hardwarebased encryption support. The 1TB 870 QVO has an endurance rating of 360TBW, which is decent for a QLC drive. We’d like to see a five year warranty instead of the three year warranty that’s offered. This alone could steer users towards competing TLC drives with five year warranties.
870 QVO drives come equipped with SLC cache. This provides fast burst performance, however the 1TB 870 comes with a 42GB cache, whereas all the other 870 QVOs come with 78GB. This means the 1TB drive will run into a performance cliff faster than the higher capacity drives. This is exacerbated by Samsung’s own claim of 80MB/s sequential writes post cache saturation compared to 150MB/s for the higher capacity drives. If you’re after performance, you’re better off with an alternative drive, but remember that performance is not the major selling point of this drive. If you’re using it for bulk storage, write performance is a minor consideration.
The 1TB 870 QVO provides acceptable performance, but don’t expect to rewrite the record books. If you don’t thrash it with writes, it will obliterate a mechanical HDD thanks to the inherent latency and I/O advantages of an SSD. This is what makes a drive ‘feel’ fast.
So, with SATA SSDs becoming commodity items, pricing is arguably the biggest differentiating factor, and this is where the 870 QVO currently falls flat. At $195 at the time of writing, it’s priced well above several competing TLC drives. Is it to do with Covid-19 logistical headaches? Or just early adopter pricing? Drop it to $150 and we’d evaluate it in a whole new light, which honestly should happen in time. At $195 though, it’s hard to recommend the 1TB 870 QVO. We are really excited to see the 8TB drive coming soon. SSD pricing continues to evolve so keep an eye out for 870 QVO bargains in the coming months.
CHRIS SZEWCZYK
The Samsung 870 QVO advances QLC tech, but it needs a serious price drop in the face of stiff competition.