The Samsung 860 QVO (1TB, 4TB) SSD Review: First Consumer SATA QLC
by Billy Tallis on November 27, 2018 11:20 AM ESTMixed Random Performance
Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%.
The Samsung 860 QVO's performance on the mixed random I/O test is substantially slower than the 860 EVO, but it is not far behind some of the other mainstream TLC drives. Running the test on a full drive does slow the 1TB 860 QVO down significantly, but it remains faster than the DRAMless TLC drive.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency rankings for the 860 QVO aren't much better than the raw performance rankings. Power consumption is generally a bit higher than the 860 EVO but doesn't vary much with capacity or state of fill, so the efficiency scores are largely reflective of the performance variations.
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The 860 QVO starts out with a fairly slow random read speed but steadily speeds up as the workload shifts toward writes, eventually catching up to the 860 EVO. When the test is run on a full drive, the 1TB 860 QVO runs out of SLC cache in the final few phases of the test and slows down instead of continuing to speed up.
Mixed Sequential Performance
Our test of mixed sequential reads and writes differs from the mixed random I/O test by performing 128kB sequential accesses rather than 4kB accesses at random locations, and the sequential test is conducted at queue depth 1. The range of mixes tested is the same, and the timing and limits on data transfers are also the same as above.
The 4TB 860 QVO handles the mixed sequential I/O test well, but the 1TB model ends up slightly slower than the DRAMless TLC drive and well behind the mainstream TLC drives.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency scores vary more among the SATA drives than the raw performance scores, so the 860 EVO and Toshiba TR200 stand out as particularly efficient while the 860 QVO 4TB is merely average and the 1TB model is struggling a bit.
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Both capacities of the 860 QVO offer decent performance at either end of the test with pure reads or pure writes, and they are unsurprisingly at their worst with the more write-heavy mixes. The 1TB 860 QVO loses far more performance across the first two thirds of the test, but catches back up with the 4TB model at the end.
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0ldman79 - Saturday, December 15, 2018 - link
I found some answers to that question on the Bench.https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2339?vs=22...
Load time, file copy times, etc, I guess more day to day testing would be appreciated. The spinner does a decent job on the BAPCo tests.
I'm wondering if the QLC will really improve my load times vs my 2TB mechanical drive that sustains nearly 200MBps read speeds in practice.
ewitte - Thursday, March 28, 2019 - link
Who in their right mind would purchase a QVO drive when the EVO is similarly priced? These drives perform poorly and have horrible longevity. 160MB/s writes after the cache!!!! I will not even touch the smaller EVO drives because the write speed is so low (500GB is ok but 1TB is so affordable now it is my minimum).Sanmayce - Friday, March 29, 2019 - link
Anand, please consider debunking the myth of data retention being limited to a few months.Really, where this myth originates from, f.e. if one buys QVO for backups what is the safe-time-between-losing-data?
My proposal is to fill the drive with 900GB 7z archive and test the integrity after, say, 6 months.
I myself am planning to buy the 1TB QVO just to find how durable it is under superheavy REAL-WORLD random read/writes - QD1. By the way, you are using 16GB spans in your tests, but the SLC is bigger than that, don't you see a problem?
bobhumplick - Thursday, May 16, 2019 - link
so if the intel 660p and the smasung qvo are the same price which one do you get?praveenvj - Friday, July 26, 2019 - link
Now that price has dropped to $400 for 4TB, does this make sense compared to EVO for daily driver PC?southleft - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Here we are about 9 months later - August 2019 - and the price of Intel's 660p 1TB model has dropped by 50% when it's on sale. So, for $85 - $95 you can get an NVMe drive with, say, 750GB of usable capacity and it will blow all of these SATA SSDs out of the water. In other words, if you don't fill the drive over about 75% full you'll have a smokin' fast rig.problemchild - Wednesday, October 23, 2019 - link
As a professional many comments here disregard what these drives are intended for and for obvius reasons you wouldn't want to buy them for a server array or high availability applications. Samsung has entered a product which is now competing with lower priced product \ brands. For the average consumer looking for a Samsung branded drive to be used as a basic storage drive for documents, photos, music and game storage it makes a lot of sense. Admittedly IMHO buying a 2TB SSD for general storage use at the $200 mark is extreme in comparison to $80 for a spinner but for some users but for gamers it may be worth the price to use as game storage drive.Scour - Sunday, June 28, 2020 - link
Question: If the SLC-cache is full, the speed drops, that´s clear. But what happened if the SSD have a power loss directly after the data-writing ends? Is all Data still accessable on the SSD (because data still have to be copied from the SLC-cache to the QLC)?leexgx - Thursday, August 6, 2020 - link
did they ever issue a firmware update with the 4TB QVO, EVO and Pro samsung ssds been problematic sometimes not working