Samsung released the 860 QVO in hopes of swaying those looking for both a small SSD for the operating system and a larger HDD for storage to buy a single high-capacity 860 QVO instead.

Decent endurance for a QLC SSD; Build quality; AES 256-bit encryption with Windows BitLocker support

High introductory MSRP; Write performance after SLC cache exhausts; Three-year warranty

Starting today, the SSD market is going to change for the better, prices will go down. If you are in the market for a SATA3 SSD and want proper value for money, hey you've reached the end of your searching destination.

The bards will sing no lionizing songs of the 860 QVO's struggle through our test suite. We entertain no hopes that it will land anywhere near the 860 EVO in our final reckoning. We distill the overall performance rating using an older SATA SSD as a baseline.

With recent QLC SSD launches like the Intel 660P and Crucial P1 , folks may have been wondering when Samsung would jump on the QLC bandwagon. I'm happy to report that your wait is now over:

Samsung launched a new consumer Solid State Drive (SSD) series today called the Samsung 860 QVO SSD. This SATA III 2.5-inch drive series is available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities and feature Samsung's brand new high-density 4-bit multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash.

The Samsung 860 QVO is not the first consumer QLC SSD we've tested, but in many ways it better conforms to our expectations for QLC than the Intel 660p and Crucial P1 did. Those NVMe SSDs don't do much to satisfy demand for a cheap entry-level drive or for a high-capacity drive, the two applications...

The 860 QVO is a great SSD most of the time, but there are a number of cheaper 1TB competitors that don't slow down. The 2TB and 4TB drives, on the other hand, are a couple of hundred dollars less than the competition and don't fall out of cache nearly as soon.

Black Friday and sales madness aside, high capacity SSDs still cost an absolute fortune. It's the main reason why so many of us still opt for small 250-500GB SSDs as our primary drive, and make do with larger, slower HDDs for storing big things like games and photos.

At just $149 for 1TB, or 15 cents per gigabyte, the SSD 860 QVO is a steal even when measured against other budget SSDs like the Crucial MX500. By moving to four-bit memory cells without a sacrifice in performance, Samsung could very well be dealing a stunning blow not just to competing SSDs, but to...

Very affordable on a cost-per-gigabyte basis; Comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities; Supports hardware encryption; Excellent reliability ratings

Relatively short warranty. SATA only; no PCI Express version

As is stands, there's no hugely compelling reason to buy the 860 QVO over rival SSDs - even Samsung's own.