Customer Ratings & Reviews

I use this in an external enclosure as a portable drive for photo storage (Lightroom catalog). I'm not quite able to get the maximum advertised speeds, but this could be due to the enclosure I'm using so I'm not going to knock it. Either way it's still plenty fast for me and much faster than a traditional hard drive. It's a great deal if you can find it on sale (I managed to get it for $180).

SSDs have come far in the past couple years, getting larger, and faster, while targeting lower prices. With the advent of nVME, speeds hit the 2,000 - 3,000 MB/s mark, 6 times faster than SATA SSDs. The 860 QVO from Samsung was introduced to continue the trend of higher capacity at a lower price, and it targets budget conscious consumers who need space and speed, but don't want to break the bank. That said, if you're looking for the fastest options out there, I'll save you some time and tell you to look for an nVME drive. You'll pay about double or more for the same capacity, but greater speed comes at a greater cost, and this drive can't touch them. If you're not concerned about being the fastest kid on the block or have a tight budget where every $20-$50 saved matters, this drive might be a good option to consider. This drive is a typical SATA 2.5inch form factor, meaning it will fit almost anywhere you currently have a 2.5inch drive. I have a stack of laptops and a couple 2.5inch drive bays that this fit perfectly fine into. The use of newer V-NAND modules means that Samsung can crank up the capacity while maintaining a small profile, and it works well. Replacing a mechanical HD with this SSD is a straight forward and direct swap. Like most SSDs, it's also very lightweight, which goes over well for those looking to shed some ounces off a laptop that sees frequent travel. I purchased a newer Lenovo laptop that came with a 1TB mechanical HD, and as a first task I swapped out that HD with this SSD. The machine is powered by a Quad Core I7, with 16GB of ram supporting it, so it's perfectly suited for testing this drive. While I didn't do a boot time comparison between the included HD and this SSD, there is a noticeable difference in speed, both in loading to Windows from the press of the button, and then when logging in. It's definitely not as fast as my other machine with a nVME SSD as the boot drive, but it's still a big improvement over traditional mechanical drives. I ran some tests on that machine using CrysalDiskMark to compare against the claimed 550MB/s sequential read, and 520MB/s sequential write, along with testing out the random read/write speeds to figure out the best use of this drive. The sequential read/write tests came back strong, with consistent read speeds around 560-562 MB/s and write speeds around 528-530 MB/s, with the occasional dip into the 510 range. These results are expected given the maturity of SATA III and it's max speed up to 600 MB/s throughput. Modern SATA SSDs should be capable of hitting their claimed speeds, and this one is no different, consistently matching or besting. In the random speed tests, however, this drive revealed a little more, posting speeds in the ranges of 190-260 MB/s and 180 - 240 MB/s for read and write tests, respectively. More importantly, the highest IOPS I hit was 62,893 on read, and 58,461 on write, well below the claims. These numbers put it in the middle of the pack with other SSDs I have tried, and my assumption is it's because of the use of QLC, and the fact they haven't been able to optimize it to the degree that current NAND drives using TLC are. I expect that over time these numbers will get better, with new controllers, and firmware, but it could also be a limitation of QLC. One other area of concern that, again, might be reflective of the newer QLC technology, and possibly long-term reliability, is the QVO warranty period. It might not seem like much, but the 860 PRO and EVO both carry a 5-year warranty, where the QVO carries a 3 year. Both other 860 drives utilize SLC or TLC, which have seen major reliability improvements over their lifecycle, and have been proven. QLC is still very new, and current iterations have shown it to wear worse over time from writes than current SLC and TLC. This will hopefully improve as the technology matures, but it's something to consider with these new drives. Random speeds and warranty concern aside, this drive is still a solid performer, and well beyond what a spinning HD is going to give in performance. It also has sequential speeds that are consistently at the max of what the interface will support and because of this, I believe this is a good drive as a secondary drive in a machine, handling large storage files or libraries, or as a primary drive for someone coming from a mechanical HD on a budget in need of serious space. The biggest hurdle someone should consider when weighing this option, though, is price. In the 2TB space there are a couple options that perform better on the random speeds, have better warranties, and run about $50 or so more. For the speed conscious that aren't yet up to nVME, that might be a worthwhile spend. For the budget conscious, though, the space provided with that extra bit of savings might be a good enough option.

Installed this hard drive in my Xbox one X. Makes the OS run very smoothly. No more sluggish load times and menu navigation.

Needed this for a dj controller and it was a easy set up, the price was amazing with my rewards!

Hard drives are, like many PC components, are difficult to review. More appropriately, difficult to write a review that is not overly technical but captures the key points. There are plenty of reviews here and other sites that go into the nitty, gritty technical details. The truth is most readers do not care and I think most reviews should not be geared to the very technical. As such, this review is going to be geared towards the novice. First thing to understand, there are two technologies for hard drives - a mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) and a solid-state drive (SSD.) HDD’s were the most common type of storage because they're relatively inexpensive and offer huge capacities. HDD's are about 1/3rd of the price of an SSD. However, they generate both noise and heat. Traditional HDD's are also much slower and, while they have many of the same interfaces as SSD's, their data throughput is limited to how fast the disk spins. Solid state drives have no moving parts, are much faster than HDD's, smaller (usually) and silent. SSD's have more limitations on capacities and get cost prohibitive at the very large sizes. Next thing to understand is the interface. Since this review is going to be about an SSD, I will discuss only SSD moving forward. There are essentially two common types of interfaces for solid state drives (there are more.) The two types are SATA and PCI Express. The SATA interface is an older technology that is more affordable when compared to the PCI express However, the PCI Express is an order of magnitude more expensive. Keep in mind, I am generalizing and reducing here. The Samsung 860 QVO 2TB is an internal SATA SSD that is affordable yet offers a large capacity. Before you purchase, if you plan to use this for a laptop; be sure to make sure it is compatible. For my test, I chose to install it as an external drive using a SATA drive enclosure. Regardless of whether you chose an internal or external installation you should be aware that the drive will not show up in Windows out of the box. You must configure the drive via the Microsoft Disk Management. There are a few steps so plan on searching for how to do it. Don't get hung up on that, it is simple. Once configured, the drive is as advertised and significantly faster than a traditional hard drive. I've attached a picture of my speed test, it exceeded the read speed of 550MB/sec and the write speed of 520MB/sec. I ran multiple tests and the Samsung 860 QVO 2TB performed well every time. However, well is relative. This drive is designed to be affordable so there are faster SSD's on the market. Please note that SSD drive performance can vary according to how full the drive is. You are going to see a lot of terms in reviews and hard drive info - M.2, NVMe, . PCIe, don't get too hung up them. Samsung really started the SSD revolution. They developed or perfected many of the SSD drive technologies you see today. You really cannot go wrong with the Samsung 860 QVO 2TB. It offers a large capacity at value price with the Samsung reliability. It’s not the fastest SSD out there, you are limited by the interface in that respect. However, this will be much faster than traditional HDD and you will notice significant gain. In closing, there are several sizes available , 1TB, 2TB and 4TB. The speed does vary between the drives with the 1TB being slow in a lot of online test ( it’s sequential write speed is half that of the 2 and 4 TB. So if you made it all the way through my review, I recommend the drive completely. Just know what you are buying before you do.

Even as a techie, seeing a 2TB SSD arrive on my doorstep made me giggle. I used this drive in a Dell Precision T5600. This machine holds my lifeblood of data: websites and virtual storage. We can all run into issues with flash from time to time, so I get it - but there were no issues with this “drive” for me. From a SATA connection at the system board to a PERC controller, no issues identifying the drive or usability. I’m a Linux guy, so I don’t do pretty GUI benchmark tests, I am a real-life enterprise user in the home. For my real job, I deal with storage and I understand latency - and how file size impacts overall speeds (throughput) or operations (IOPS). Bigger files, it gets there faster. Tons of smaller files, it needs to keep restarting on each file & takes longer. This drive, like any data storage device performs based on the type of workload you throw at it. Are all of the reads close together? Then, it’ll perform well, just like any other device, spinning or not, a sequential data need allows everything to be faster. Random reads/writes are the speed bump of all workflows. Will you, the consumer, notice it? Do you even think about where the data sits? Nope. And you don’t need to. You’ll be just fine and won’t have any complaints (well, unless the price is over the top). I ran tests when a system had logical volume management vs traditional disk with a traditional wiping filesystem and didn’t find much, if any, of a difference between the layers of overhead when using this device. Read and write speeds with ‘dd’ - and ensuring cache is out of the picture with sysctl (because 3.4 GB/s is insane and unrealistic) got me ~ 380MB/s writes & ~520MB/s on reads -- again, sequential (in order - no searching to find the data). As this is MUCH faster than spinning media, it’s great. I’m picky and I have 0 complaints with this disk. All in all and in my limited time with it, it’s proven to be a quick, stable flash device (SSD) and would GLADLY pick up another one for traditional OS/file storage.

Before you bash a product, understand its target userbase, set reasonable expectations based on its price, and know how to use your hardware. This drive is not a performance drive, and it is not an M2 drive as it uses the aging SATA interface. Samsung clearly positioned this as a value high capacity drive with an emphasis on reliability with decent speed as an afterthought. I never noticed any drive slowdowns either, even when transferring about 1.5 terabytes of sample libraries to it. Additionally, the drive will not show up in windows out of the box. You have to open Disk Management and set the drive up (basically: enable a boot partition, and then format it and assign it a drive letter. I recommend 1024 bit allocation units for this drive and NTFS). Don't hate on the drive because you didn't set it up properly. If I had to be picky with some negatives, its that it is a bit slow for an SSD and it draws a bit more power than more expensive models. Additionally, it has a tendency to heat up when transferring large files. It averages about 59c in room temperature even sitting outside of an enclosure while transferring my data to it. If its that hot in an ideal airflow environment, I'm a little concerned how hot it could get inside a laptop or tower that's warmer with less airflow. Even my laptop's 970 evo m2 card doesn't get that hot under load. Attached is a picture of my disk benchmarks. Overall very solid. an 8gb test revealed 430mb/s read and write on average, 4kb random read and write sitting between 70 and 150mb/s If you need a value 2tb drive with decent speeds and great endurance and you are going to be mostly performing read operations or light desktop usage OR if using heavily are planning on using it in a well ventilated place, this is the drive for you. For faster speeds and better power draw/temps, look elsewhere but prepare to pay much more.

Excellent SSD option for those looking for a quality 2TB drive. I’m currently using it to house all of my PC games without issue. This is a SATA drive, so don’t expect blistering speeds like a PCIE M.2 drives. That being said, I truly think this is an excellent choice for those desiring a larger local storage, but don’t want to completely compromise all performance for a rotation drive.

Bought this to replace two storage drives: 500GB SSD (Samsung 850 EVO) and HDD 7200rpm drive. No complaints as I am seeing the posted speeds (562/531). I had games installed on the SSD, so I am not seeing any difference there. I was using the HDD as storage for virtual machines and they run much better now. I'm very happy with the purchase and the price (matched another local store and online prices). Yes, QVO drives are not as fast as other SSD tech; Samsung knows what they are doing and have never let me down. This is Samsung SSD #4 I have purchased and I don't see that trend stopping anytime soon. There is no need comparing this to an M.2 drive, they are a completely different tech and story. Bench was done with CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0g on an X299 system with Intel RST 17.7.0.1006.

So I was able to breath new life into an old 2011 Lenovo Ideapad laptop. I had at first connected this to my laptop using a Universal USB adapter, which was AC Powered and had an on/off switch, and it was all I had at the time vs a External Drive enclosure (which I’ll need to shop around for one soon). I did get a notification pop up saying the Samsung Drive was connected but, I couldn’t the drive icon mounted anywhere in the computer. Something I might be doing wrong perhaps? Anyhow, I connected it to my 2011 Mac mini, and it showed on the desktop I believe but a dialogue box says it’s uninitialized. I formatted it for DOS use, and then reconnected it to the Lenovo, and this time it was visible. I started the cloning process, (used Carbon Copy Cloner aka CCC) having everything copied from the stock 320GB Drive onto this new SSD. It took maybe about 1-2 hours (lost count), but I didn’t have much stuff on my laptop. Once all done, disconnected, powered off laptop and swapped internal drives and, booted up the laptop which amazingly was fast, under 10 seconds. I’m impressed and also the read and write speeds were amazing. However, I read other reviews where this drive was an excellent upgrade for their gaming console, or even their Mac computer. I have a PS4 Pro at the moment, and a Mac mini as I said earlier (that I have upgraded with a 500gb Samsung 860 EVO) Though my laptop is still running decent and not failing (much better with the new drive), I still feel a need someday to upgrade to a newer machine in the future, more compact (using the faster, smaller Nvme SSDs). I’ve had this laptop since late/ending 2010 being a low end type with an old generation i3 processor; I might just donate this soon (taking out the 1Tb Samsung of course, re-install the old HDD) within the next few years or sooner, and use this drive for other applications. One thing for sure, I’ll get a USB 3.0 external drive enclosure, and I can connect this to my Mac or PS4 no doubt. Or, find refurbished or used i7 laptops, like a Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude, and swap out the drive with this one. Overall I’m very, very pleased with Samsungs new SSD addition and will benefit using this drive in the many years to come.

I had a chance to review the Samsung 860 QVO 2TB SSD. if you're upgrading from a traditional hard drive you're going to notice a huge difference. If you're trying to look for reviews for comparing this to another SSD, I can still say this is a fast SSD. I've purchased a few other SSDs over the years and are only able to compare them to those. I can say without a doubt this boots up much faster as well as load up my huge video files I have for editing. I'm really quite happy with the Samsung 860 QVO. I'd highly recommend it.

This isnt your regular speedy style ssd. On the slower side for ssd's, but still fast or faster than a hdd. Im using mine in a 2018 Asus gaming laptop as a storage drive. My boot drive is a 512gb m.2 ssd. This loads faster than my origonal seagate barracuda hdd of the same storage space. I used Acronis True Image to transfer everything from my old hdd to my Samsung ssd. For the money this ssd is hard to beat in its storage capacity and speed.

Samsung always delivers with their SSDs. From performance to speed you are always getting something not only good but reliable. This 860 is no exception, I used this SSD inside of a gaming rig and games booted up with quickness. GTA V and RE2: Remake booted faster than any HDD I’ve ever used. Nothing comes in the box besides the 2TB SSD. There isn’t much to say honestly because it’s just a really great SSD especially if you was like me late to the SSD years but they have became more affordable over the years. Once you finally installed Windows 10 into a SSD it’s a complete different computer. I know I was was instantly amazed at how quick files and Chrome open. Samsung made a beast of an SSD and thats what you get here. Has ample space for all of your PC needs. Samsung keep doing a great job.

I'm very happy with this drive. I bought it as an extra hard drive. I already have a 500GB SSD running my operating system, so there was no need to replace that. I also have a 1TB HDD that was quickly filling up with games, so I wanted a separate SDD to hold all of my games and give them that extra speed for loading and performance. This 2TB SSD fit the bill. Installation was very easy, although your mileage may vary as computer setups can vary greatly. In my setup, I have a gaming case and the side panel comes right off, giving easy access to the 2.5" bay, power supply, and motherboard. This was my first installation with only YouTube to assist. I mounted the SSD to the 2.5" bracket, connected the SATA cable to the drive and the motherboard, found a plug and connected it to the power supply, put the panel back on the case, and booted up my computer - all in less than 30 minutes. Once the computer was booted, I went into Disk Management and designated the drive as G: (for gaming *wink*) and there it was - a shiny new 2TB SSD ready for use. It seems as fast as advertised, and I'm happy with what I've seen so far from the performance. I don't expect any issues and I expect to get many years of use from it. My only gripe is that it literally comes only with the drive and an instruction manual. No screws to mount it to the 2.5" bracket? No SATA cable? The instruction manual even says they are sold separately. It is annoying to have to buy a 2.5" bracket just for the screws when my computer already has the 2.5" bracket available. Luckily I had a few screws around that fit the thread. They were about a 1/4" too long so I had to add washers as spacers, but in all, it works. I can't deduct from the overall rating, but I wish Samsung would consider including screws and a SATA cable. I can't imagine these parts would add much overhead to a drive already in the ~$250 range (regular price), and it would be less of a hassle for customers. Just food for thought Samsung.

I bought this for my 6 year old video editing computer to replace my boot drive (which barely had enough space for my Windows OS). I still have a couple additional HDDs that I use for file storage. Well, I got a big editing job, and needed more cache space to edit, so I bit the bullet and bought this SSD to replace my boot drive: and it made a HUGE, tremendous difference! Physical installation was really easy and cloning my old drive contents over was much less of a task than I had expected as well. My computer used to take 4-6 minutes from power up, through POST until Windows had finished loading and I could open my first program. Longer than it takes to go in the other room and prepare a cup of coffee. It was really a long, long time. Now the entire boot process takes 4-6 seconds!!! No exaggeration, it really sped up my boot up time by a factor of 60!! The difference in my computer is as stark as night and day! I can now edit 4k footage without battling an eyelash and enjoy lightning fast response time in my most used programs (Premiere Pro, Audition, After Effects, Lightroom and Photoshop). I really wish I had purchased one of these a few years ago but the cost always seemed too high for what I genuinely thought would only be an incremental difference to my computer speed... now I know so much better!

Easy and cost effective upgrade for your laptop or desktop! To test this new drive, I used a Lenovo T410 for my reference system. I first rebuild the computer with Windows 10 and its original drive, then ran a Passmark Performance testing tool to compare disk performance. Then, I removed the original disk and replaced it with the Samsumg 860 QVO drive and built the same Windows 10 image. Once built, I loaded the Passmark performance testing tool to make a direct comparison. I'm please to report that the new drive was 10 times faster than the old one - and was WAY bigger in capacity!' Sure, there are faster SSD drives available (like the Samsung EVO series), but they cost ALOT more. This drive loaded easily and performed well. If you are looking for a no-brainer upgrade - an SSD like this Samsung 860 QVO is an easy choice!

Wotkmanship of the Geek service was way below expectations. For example, they desrroyed the power cord to my Omega desktop backup hard drive they requested I bring in along with my desktop compiter so they could use it to transfer the data from the old drive to new druve. They destroyed the power cord withoit providing a physical replacement. I was told I could order another on my own. Service requested in the trabsfer of old data was not done. Desktop computer was taken in twice for the same service and not completed. Ended up taking the desktoo compiter to another computer repair place in order to have the old data files tranafered. Will never use the Bastrop Gerk service again and plan to cancel my service contract. WOULD NOT RECOMMEMD THEIR SUPPORT TO ANYONE. Bastrop Best Buy STORE, until this experience, was one of our top chooses to shop at. Our confidense in the store is much less now.

After losing my C drive on a Windows 8.1 desktop, I initially shopped for an HDD replacement. I found a drive that I thought would do the job and traveled to Best Buy to pick it up. On a lark, I decided to check out the SSD drives, assuming that the cost would be a limiting factor. While I paid a bit more per TB than I would have otherwise, I have no regrets. The Samsung was easy to install, and it is, of course, free of noise. More importantly, it is significantly faster when loading my resource hungry photo editing programs and creating very large (1-2 GB) temporary files. Windows 10 loads much faster than did 8.1 on my old HDD, and as an unanticipated plus, the machine runs noticeably cooler with the SSD. While it is too soon to judge it's longevity, it's had about 300 hours of use in the past month; so far so good. (I'm thinking about replacing my 4TB internal HDD with another Samsung SSD. Improve throughput and cool the beast down even more.)

Great drive with lots of room. This is the brand that I trust most with my data. I plugged it in and it worked right off the bat. I would recommend this to anyone that is upgrading to a larger hard drive. Way faster than a spinner. Way more quite.

Excellent product. Great for starter entry for hard drive replacement from HDD to SSD. No problem. Works right away. Reduce my 3 yrs old pc booting time from 2min to 20sec. For regular daily usage with bigger storage, this QVO (black tag) is good enough. Then you can jump ship to EVO (grey tag) or even PRO (red tag) for better performance. But in my opinion, EVO is better for performance. PRO is still too expensive. QVO is the best for the price.