Flash memory prices have been on a downward trajectory for years. A decade ago, this trend was helping SSDs establish a foothold in the consumer market—largely for enthusiasts. Now, SSDs have taken over as the default storage medium for consumer PCs and further advances in flash memory are no longer pushing consumer SSDs into new product segments. Instead, cheaper flash is driving an increase in SSD capacity.
That growth in drive capacity has not been steady. For both technical and marketing reasons, consumer SSD capacities stick close to powers of two. The first 2TB consumer SSDs started to show up in 2015, and now 2TB options are common across all the SSD market segments. 4TB drives started to show up in 2018 but are still quite rare, and this year we've seen the first 8TB consumer SSDs.
Today we're looking at the first two consumer-oriented 8TB SSDs. The 8TB Samsung 870 QVO is a SATA drive from the brand that has been at the forefront of the past several capacity increases and leads the SSD market by most other measures. The other drive is the 8TB Sabrent Rocket Q, a M.2 NVMe drive from a brand that's working to stand out from the crowd of many other Phison partners. Unsurprisingly, both of these drives use four bit per cell QLC NAND flash memory which offers the lowest cost per GB and the highest per-die capacities currently available. QLC NAND generally puts SSDs into an entry-level market segment, but due to their extreme capacities these 8TB SSDs are still some of the most expensive drives in the consumer SSD market.
That growth in drive capacity has not been steady. For both technical and marketing reasons, consumer SSD capacities stick close to powers of two. The first 2TB consumer SSDs started to show up in 2015, and now 2TB options are common across all the SSD market segments. 4TB drives started to show up in 2018 but are still quite rare, and this year we've seen the first 8TB consumer SSDs.
Today we're looking at the first two consumer-oriented 8TB SSDs. The 8TB Samsung 870 QVO is a SATA drive from the brand that has been at the forefront of the past several capacity increases and leads the SSD market by most other measures. The other drive is the 8TB Sabrent Rocket Q, a M.2 NVMe drive from a brand that's working to stand out from the crowd of many other Phison partners. Unsurprisingly, both of these drives use four bit per cell QLC NAND flash memory which offers the lowest cost per GB and the highest per-die capacities currently available. QLC NAND generally puts SSDs into an entry-level market segment, but due to their extreme capacities these 8TB SSDs are still some of the most expensive drives in the consumer SSD market.
