Samsung

Samsung 870 EVO

SATA 2.5" · SATA 6 Gbps · Samsung MKX

SATA 2.5" 2021 5-year warranty 250 GB – 4 TB
Samsung Samsung 870 EVO
Specs & Capacities

Specifications

General specifications
InterfaceSATA 6 Gbps
ControllerSamsung MKX
NAND TypeSamsung 128-layer 3D V-NAND TLC
DRAM CacheLPDDR4
Warranty5 years
Active Power2.2 W
Idle Power0.05 W
250 GB specifications
Seq Read560 MB/s
Seq Write530 MB/s
Rand Read98,000 IOPS
Rand Write88,000 IOPS
Endurance150 TBW
Part NumberMZ-77E250B
DRAM Cache512MB LPDDR4
Editor Notes

Overview

The Samsung 870 EVO was released in January 2021 and is most likely the final generation of Samsung's EVO SATA line. It replaced the 860 EVO with updated 128-layer V-NAND and the MKX controller. The SATA interface was already mostly saturated, but the 870 EVO's specs: 560 MB/s sequential read and 530 MB/s write, added a modest 10–20 MB/s compared to the predecessor.

By 2021, NVMe SSDs had dropped in price to the point where the SATA vs NVMe price premium had largely closed. The 870 EVO was released into a market where NVMe drives were a realistic and superior choice for most buyers, as M.2 NVMe slots were also common in new PCs at the time. Samsung positioned it for systems without M.2, upgrades to older platforms, and use cases where compatibility matters more than raw throughput.

The TurboWrite SLC cache scales from around 6GB on the 250GB model up to approximately 78GB on the 4TB. Outside the cache, sustained write performance drops, as with all TLC consumer drives. Real-world performance in typical desktop workloads (OS, applications, games) is not distinguishable from the 860 EVO and limited mainly by the SATA bus.

TBW ratings are identical to the 860 EVO at 600 TBW for the 1TB model. The 5-year warranty is unchanged.

External Reviews

Reviews

  • “Knowing that any changes the 870 EVO brings relative to its predecessor will be minor, the most important function of this review is simply to check whether Samsung remains at least consistent with the refresh. As far as we can tell, all seems to be well. Our testing didn't reveal any serious performance regressions, though several signs point to the 870 EVO's SLC caching being a bit less effective. Since this only shows up on tests that are deliberately more strenuous than any common consumer workload, we're not concerned by these results. Otherwise, the 870 EVO continues to be just about as fast as possible for a SATA SSD, and is a fine replacement for the 860 EVO.”

    AnandTech (archived)

  • “On paper, the 870 EVO seemed like a modest refresh of the last-gen model; however, results from our benchmarks told a slightly different story.”

    StorageReview