My primary SSD in my system is Samsung's 860 EVO 500GB drive. I use this 860 QVO 2TB and a Crucial BX500 960GB as my secondary SSDs to store my PC game files downloaded from Steam and other content delivery services. So here's my experience with the drive after six months of use:
1. It's fast for my needs: Gaming being the major factor. Never really had a hiccup (as long as I trim/optimize the drive every two or three days). Moving Steam games between this and my BX500 is quick. Just be advised that NAND Flash is capable of much faster speeds than advertised. The limit is the SATA III connection (capped at 6Gbps). (Placing this drive into an external enclosure yields similar results.)
2. I'd highly recommend (as with any SSD) to enable over-provisioning (10% is ideal). What this does is basically take that percentage of the drive and disable user access to it. This increases performance and extends the lifespan of the SSD.
3. The 2TB version is rated at 720TBW. Unless the user is doing large file transfers on a daily basis, this drive can last for years. At the time of this review, there is a newer version of Samsung's QVO SSDs: the 870 series, which the 2TB is also rated the same amount. And both have the same 3-year warranty or rated TBW.
4. I bought this at Amazon for $230 (+tax) at the time, which is a good value considering it's a QVO drive. So QVOs are QLC (or quad-level cell) drives, which means they store 4 bits of data per cell (compared to the TLC EVO drives which store 3-bits of data per cell). Having more bits means higher capacities and reduced costs. The newer 870 QVOs can have up to 8TB of storage (this 860 QVO maxed out at 4TB).
The talk that QLC drives have shorter life expectancy compared to SLC, MLC, or TLC drives shouldn't worry anyone. Sure they have fewer program/erase cycles, but as long as the user enables over-provisioning and not doing too many heavy workloads the drive should last for years. The whole point of QLC (and future SSD tech) is to maximize capacity and reduced costs per GB.
Overall, this is a good drive and there will always be newer tech around the corner. For my six months of use, it's so far been reliable and no issues. Things may be different after I post this review, but I will update this review if something does happen.
| Hard Drive | 1000 GB Solid State Drive |
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