SAMSUNG

1TB 860 QVO SSD Review

Samsung leads the SSD industry, largely due to the huge lead the company opened up in the race to 3D flash. Along the way, Samsung established a reputation as an SSD powerhouse and has consistently set the standard for performance, quality, and support. But it isn't the first to bring a QLC SSD to market. Companies like Intel and Micron/Crucial already have QLC SSDs, but we knew it was only a matter of time until the SSD giant joined in.
The 860 QVO features Samsung’s newest V4 QLC V-NAND paired with the SATA interface and its well-established MJX controller. Together, these components deliver over 550/520MB/s of sequential read/write throughput and up to 97,000/89,000 random read/write IOPS. However, performance is only one part of the equation: the 860 QVO uses lower-quality QLC flash that is supposed to bring lower prices and higher capacity to the masses, but the company's pricing isn't as competitive with other options as we expected.
2018 marked the introduction of QLC SSDs, but they will truly thrive in 2019. Enthusiasts aren't very enthusiastic, though. QLC flash has inherently lower native write speeds and lower endurance than the TLC or MLC flash found in most modern SSDs. But, like the move to other types of flash before it, QLC should pave the way for larger storage devices and lower prices, which is always good for us. The Intel 660p is a prime example. At launch, it set the new low bar for value NVMe storage. Crucial's P1 followed soon after.
We finally learned about the 860 QVO when Samsung announced it earlier this year, and we were finally given a name at Samsung’s Tech Day event last month. During the announcement, Samsung briefly listed the 860 QVO on a slide alongside a 980 QVO but didn't provide more detail about the mystery 980 model. As with SSDs based on other types of flash, we expect models with higher performance and endurance to come to market alongside cheaper and slower models, so it's logical to conclude the 980 QVO will be a higher-performance model. Samsung hasn't announced a launch date.

For now, we have the 860 QVO in our hands. Other NVMe QLC SSDs preceded it to the consumer market, but the QVO is the first SATA QLC model.
Samsung had to dig into its firmware and tweak it a bit more to maintain a high level of performance with the more-complex V4 64-layer QLC V-NAND. The Samsung 860 QVO includes Intelligent TurboWrite technology, just like the 860 and 970 EVO models. This feature assigns a portion of the flash to run in SLC mode, thus creating a fast cache that absorbs incoming data to speed operations.
All QVO SSDs come with a static 6GB write cache that doesn't change regardless of conditions, but they also have a larger intelligent write cache of 36-72GB (depending on drive capacity). This intelligent cache dynamically expands and contracts based on the amount of data stored on the drive. This provides impressive performance for inbound writes, but if the drive doesn’t have enough free space the intelligent cache will not be available, leaving you with just 6GB of static cache. On the 1TB model, the intelligent cache evaporates after there is less than 168GB of free space. We have reached out to Samsung for specifics about the other capacities and will update as necessary. 

Verdict
If you are in the market for a new SATA based SSD, the Samsung 860 QVO delivers acceptable performance, high capacity, and enough endurance to satisfy most users. It even includes AES 256-bit encryption with Windows BitLocker support. The only thing that's missing is the lower price point we expect from QLC SSDs, which makes the 860 QVO hard to recommend over the proliferation of faster and cheaper SSDs on the market.


Sean Webster