Samsung 870 QVO 8TB SATA III 2.5"

The 870 QVO 8TB is the biggest SATA SSD you can buy without taking out a loan. It's not fast, but it's huge, and at the right price, that's enough.

Sequential speeds top out at 560 MB/s read and 530 MB/s write, which is basically the ceiling for SATA III. Nothing surprising there. The random performance is where it gets interesting: 98K read IOPS and 88K write IOPS put it at the 44th percentile in our database, which is solidly middle of the pack. For an 8TB QLC drive, that's actually respectable. The DRAM cache helps keep things snappy in everyday use, but sustained writes will eventually hit the QLC wall and slow down. Don't expect NVMe-level responsiveness, but for a SATA drive, it's fine.

The 870 QVO's real competition isn't other SATA drives, it's the NVMe drives that cost about the same. The Western Digital Black SN850X and Kingston FURY Renegade G5 both blow this thing out of the water on speed, but they top out at 4TB. The Crucial T500 is another strong NVMe option. If you need 8TB in a single drive, the 870 QVO is basically your only realistic choice in this price range. If you can live with 4TB, get an NVMe drive instead and enjoy 10x the speed.

Here's the thing: prices are all over the map. We're seeing this drive listed anywhere from USD 645 to USD 1,895 depending on the vendor. That's a USD 1,250 spread, which is insane. If you're paying anywhere near the high end, you're getting ripped off. The best deal in our data is at the USD 645 mark, and at that price, this drive makes a lot of sense for bulk storage. At USD 1,895, you'd be better off buying two smaller NVMe drives and a SATA adapter.

The Samsung 870 QVO 8TB is the drive you buy when you need a ridiculous amount of storage in a 2.5-inch SATA package and you don't want to sell a kidney for it. It's not the fastest SSD on the planet, but it's the biggest one most people can actually afford. The one thing to know: this is a capacity play, not a speed play.

If you're looking for a boot drive or anything speed-sensitive, this isn't it. Go get a WD Black SN850X or Crucial T500 instead. If you're on a tight budget and don't need 8TB, a 2TB NVMe drive will cost less and run circles around this thing.

Buy the Samsung 870 QVO 8TB if you need maximum capacity in a SATA form factor and you find it at the low end of the price range. It's a reliable, well-supported drive with excellent endurance for QLC. But if speed matters more than capacity, or if you're paying more than USD 700, look elsewhere. This is a storage workhorse, not a performance champion.