Samsung 870 QVO

Samsung's 870 QVO succeeded the 860 QVO in early 2021 with updated 128-layer V-NAND and the newer MKX controller. It covers the same 1TB to 4TB capacities but also adds, for the first time, an 8TB model, which puts it among the highest-capacity consumer 2.5" SATA options.

Like the 860 QVO, the 870 QVO uses QLC (4 bits per cell) NAND and relies on a large Intelligent TurboWrite SLC buffer to sustain write speeds in typical workloads. The buffer is comparatively large, ranging from around 42GB on the 1TB model. Within the buffer, performance is similar to the 870 EVO. Outside it, write throughput falls back to slow native QLC speeds.

The MKX controller and 128-layer NAND bring the sequential speed ceiling up very slightly, to 560 MB/s read and 530 MB/s write (over the 860 QVO's 550/520). In sustained random write workloads that exhaust the SLC cache, the QVO behaves differently from the EVO; this is rarely a factor in desktop storage or media archival use cases, but matters for write-intensive tasks.

The 870 QVO comes with a 3-year warranty versus 5 years on the EVO line. TBW ratings are identical to the 860 QVO at each capacity point. The drive is positioned as a cost-efficient option for high-capacity storage. Common use cases would be NAS secondary storage, media libraries, and low-frequency backups rather than primary OS drives where write endurance is more relevant.