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Samsung has launched a new range of 2.5-inch form factor SATA interface SSDs. The new Samsung 860 QVO SSD targets entry-level consumers but will also appeal to users wanting to replace large mechanical drives with SSDs. The new drives start off with at 1TB and go all the way up to 4TB so this represents quite a shift in the traditional capacities offered by SSDs.

The new drives use high-density 4-bit multi-level cell NAND flash architecture to deliver drives with up to 4TB capacity. Samsung’s headline claim is that the 860 QVO range’s combination of capacities and price points delivers terabyte capacities to the masses.

In its own tests, an 860 QVO SSD exhibited sequential read and write speeds of up to 550 megabytes per second (MB/s) and 520 MB/s, respectively. Random read and write speeds are pegged at 97K and 89K IOPS respectively. To further improve performance, there is a varying amount of LPDDR4 DRAM onboard each SSD. 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB models come with 1GB, 2GB, and 4GB of DRAM respectively.

Buyers of the Samsung 860 QVO SSDs will get a three year limited or total bytes written based warranty, depending upon drive capacity.

Samsung says that the entry-level 1TB 860 QVO will be priced at just £136.99 for 1TB in the UK, while the 2TB SKU will set you back $299.99. The massive 4TB SKU is priced at $599.99. There is no word on UK pricing for the larger models, but the current cheapest 2TB SSD in the UK is £323 and the cheapest 4TB drive is the 4TB Samsung 860 EVO priced at £839 so these new drives should represent great value for money if you require a lot of storage. Due to the drop in SSD pricing and Black Friday sales, the 1TB option is less appealing as there have been many options around the £130 price point.

According to Samsung, the 860 QVO family comes backed with a 3-year warranty and will be available to purchase starting on December 16th.

There are some caveats to the new drive, the QLC NAND is new and untested in the real world in terms of reliability. It also can’t perform as well with file transfers due to limitations of its caching technology so unless the 1TB options lands at a very low price it may struggle to compete with competitively price TLC initially.

 

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