Samsung 860 or 870 EVO? (MBP 2012)

[macstatic]

I'm trying to decide on a 2TB Samsung 860 EVO or a 870 EVO SATA 2.5" SSD for my mid-2012 MacBook Pro. I'm not removing the DVD drive so that single SSD will be for all my storage needs.
The price difference here is around US$ 60. Is the 870 worth it? Will it make any difference for my particular machine?

(PS: I hear the "QVO" models which are cheaper aren't recommended, although I'm not sure why.)

 

[ght56]

Either would be a great choice—for most workloads you are not going to notice a difference between the two different generation EVO drives.

The QVO has slower sustained performance because it uses 4 bits per flash cell and, during writing, if you exhaust the cache you get absolutely terrible write performance (which you do not want for an OS drive.) Additionally, the QVO has a relatively low rated endurance, and it isn't quite clear how long QLC NAND works in the long-term as it is relatively a new entry to the consumer market.

Comparatively, the 860/870 EVO is 3 bits per cell with more endurance and better performance, and the 860/850 PRO is 2 bits per cell with the most endurance and best performance, although the real-world performance difference between the EVO and PRO is only going to be apparent for those constantly doing massive writes. The real-world endurance of both the EVO and PRO have suggested themselves to be way beyond what Samsung warranties. One DIY test got smaller sized 256 GB previous generation Samsung drives (i.e., ones with lower endurance ratings as smaller drives have less endurance) to pretty insane levels, with the EVO reaching 1.2 and the PRO reaching 9 petabytes.

 

[macstatic]

Thanks for explaining!
I don't know who would benefit from the QVO models, but it's definitely not for me based on what you're saying.
It appears that the US$ 60 difference between the 870 EVO and 860 EVO isn't worth it, so I'm going to order the 2TB 860 EVO 2.5" SATA.

Two years ago I replaced the factory-installed MacBook Pro HDD with a 2.5" SATA Samsung 1TB 860 EVO (never had any problems with it, expecting the same with the new 2TB), so I'll be moving the 1TB 860 EVO over to my mid-2010 Mac Pro for use as a MacOS/apps boot disk.

The Mac Pro actually received a 2.5" SATA Samsung 128GB 830 series SSD (for MacOS/apps) 8 years ago but it's almost full now (lots of AU/VST plugins and other apps, and of course MacOS gets bigger for each new version).
I actually bought two of those 128GB 830 series SSDs (the other one for use as a Photoshop scratch disk/Lightroom cache. Both have been flawless for all that time. Now I just need to figure out how to put those two 128GB SSDs to good use

 

[ght56]

I think the 860 should serve you well! I remember when the 830's were brand new. My immediate thought was, "that wasn't all that long ago" and then it dawns on me that was like a decade ago. I think I'm getting old.

 

[macstatic]

Hehe. Same here.
I think I like to buy things that last, and these SSDs appear to do that!

I ordered the 2TB 860 EVO and am looking forward to putting it inside the Macbook Pro. I'll probably clone the 1TB SSD already in it first (instead of re-installing everything from scratch).