How do QLC SSDs work, and should you avoid them? | Upscaled

[@knechtnoobrecht-c137]

This format is one of the best for tech nerds on KZbin. Pls never stop.

[@WarriorsPhoto]

He definitely is. (:

[@xabiergranja]

This is the best thing that Engadget publishes. Great series, great host.

[@e51btrei]

True! I love this format!

[@Arshadkhan-mk6hs]

More such content plz

[@1337Superfly]

Absolutely agree. Such a leap up from any of the other tech websites video content. This is the best.

[@danielwoods7325]

Right? Everything else they put out, I’ll watch it if I’m bored and I notice a video is up, but these I’ll specifically look out for.

[@salty4]

You spoke my mind

[@renkoh]

Is it just me, or is the audio sync on this extremely off?

[@JourdanCameron]

Yeah, I noticed that.

[@honoredshadow1975]

I thought it was my bluetooth speakers were doing that with my laptop haha. Glad its not and others have noticed :)

[@raminka]

Lipsync is rubbish

[@allruiz]

I was wondering exactly this, so I came just to reassure I'm not loosing my mind.

[@PebblesChan]

For me it’s just fine. Maybe its the speed of sound being slower than the speed of light.

[@WarriorsPhoto]

I love how well done these videos are. The presenter does a great job explaining complex electronics. Thank you sir.

[@PoeLemic]

I watched this on another website -- a news site, then came here to watch it again. This is sure good content by Engadget. This guy really communicatest the issues with SSD and storage tech.

[@jeanmont]

I recently upgraded my main computer with an SSD so I've been reading/watching everything I can about this technology. This is an excellent video to get you started on different SSD types and to make sure you know exactly what you're buying when you finally decide to upgrade your computer. I feel Crucial MX500 is still the best (budget) option cause it's TLC and it comes with an actual DRAM module, which does most of the writing heavy lifting (as opposed to that SLC "emulation" cache nonsense that some TLC/QLC drives use), saving you precious write cycles, thus increasing your drive's operation speed AND lifespan.

[@hitmanvivek]

Upscaled series has been amazing so long.. loving it.. Can you do a video on monitors especially with color spaces (sRGB, Adobe RGB ), response times and panel types (TN, VA, IPS) especially Monitors vs big TV's

[@Hellball911]

Absolutely love this series!! Best thing on Engadget

[@gabcaires2]

This channel is amazing, keep up the good work!

[@AbhimanyuKumar-bt2xf]

wow, plethora of knowledge under 15 min (most of which I couldn't absorb)!

[@junaidzaka2365]

Wow, I finally understand the SSD jargons. Clear and concise explaination!

[@manu40729]

Engadget pls don’t abandon this series ........please !

[@Multimeter1]

MORE OF THESE. Loved the Intel dive. Talk about mesh vs ring CPU design next! Also AMD CCX Zen architecture!

[@rtyzxc]

TLC seems to be the sweet spot for speed and reliability. QLC is the cheapo option.

[@rugvedmanorkar]

Need more episodes. This is great geek quarantine content

[@Freak80MC]

Your voice seems to be delayed from your mouth actually moving oof

[@nehemoth]

Yes, looking for this comment because I think was my audio out of sync.

[@ashkara8652]

The WD Blue SN550 1TB and Crucial P1 1TB are both 104.99 USD right now on Amazon. Prices for NVME SSD's have never been better, to the point of being competitive with SATA drives in terms of pricing. Pay 5-10 bucks more for 3 to 4 times the performance with 5 year warranties.

[@anmolagrawal5358]

This is an awesome tech info series, good job man!

[@Chuck_vs._The_Comment_Section]

A related video topic is NVMe 2.0. In particular, I find the question of when it will come to the consumer market and how interfaces might change as a result exciting. - When all storage media, including hard disks, "speak" NVMe 2.0, will this be the end for SATA?

[@JogBird]

just get both, mix and match, qlc for capacity and slc for performance

[@MrMagichobo21]

you can't even buy SLC flash ssds in the consumer market

[@taegire]

MLC for your performance as a boot drive, TLC for moving large files and games. I wouldn't even bother with QLC unless your replacing a hard drive in a console.

[@Kostas_Sifakis]

Quick buying guide: Open a site which compares ssds/m.2s n' compare/sort: prices/gb and read or write speeds of your preference. Tip! Over 3.000 writes are m.2s TLC or better. Pick same or similar prices of drives regarding reviews/benchmarks. HDDs for casual users should being used as an external back up drive nowdays. Backup => Unplug.

[@drjones694]

Love this series his videos need a playlist

[@ItsAkile]

Good stuff my guy, as usual. I did a lot of this research but bad memory could always use these great videos. looks forwards to more banging videos 🙏 I'm getting some big Hard Drives for cold backup, just makes sense at these lovely prices haha.

[@anonymoususer5381]

SLC - Superior Level Cell MLC - Moron Level Cell TLC - Turd Level Cell

[@sudarsandm]

Good analysis and explanation.

[@JohnDuthie]

I bought one of those 256GB "Inland Professional" NVME SSDs from Microcenter early last year. Is there any CPUZ-like application that will list more specific details about the flash chips? I don't feel like ripping it out of my PC to figure it out.

[@MrMagichobo21]

HWinfo maybe

[@JohnDuthie]

Joby Fluorine Thanks! Weird that I was googling this 15 mins ago and you pop up with a response. I actually found it with some googlfu

[@someoneonly]

this video is very well researched and well presented. well done

[@Chuck_vs._The_Comment_Section]

About 1 year later, there is still no sign of PLC or hybrid SSDs. However, at least Samsung's QLC Sata SSDs have become an interesting alternative. Depending on when you look in the price comparison portal of your choice, certain models are significantly cheaper than TLC SSDs.

[@glenwaldrop8166]

There's another point about the endurance, a couple of years ago they learned that high voltage applied at high temps can effectively reset the NAND to almost factory new. We'll eventually likely see a new optimization option on our NAND drives that resets the write capability. Also PLC is probably DOA unless they can cheaply have a 16 channel device or 192 layers, QLC is already slower in write speeds than some of my 2015 hard drives after using it's cache, much less my 2017 and later drives. As much as I like the idea of a 4TB or 8TB SSD only costing ~$100 I just don't see it.

[@NoxmilesDe]

QLC is good if you just store data once and Sometimes read it. Video finish after 10 seconds!

[@pradap2298]

Does it good for gaming

[@sunilcosmos4783]

I found your analysis a more genuinely researched one. I am currently looking at Kingston's QLC-based 2.5" SSD versus Crucial's very popular MX500 (both 1TB versions), which have a ₹2k(INR currency) difference in their prices. Can you please suggest should I go ahead with the QLC disk since I'm a bit tight on budget? P.S.: I'm upgrading from a 5400RPM HDD on my Acer Nitro-5 AMD Ryzen-5 2500u, and simply looking for a storage unit to replace my HDD since my OS is already running on Adata's M.2 SATA (with DRAM cache) which is doing great for my requirements.

[@jfitzpatrick6108]

Great explanation of a complex topic! 👍

[@benceze]

Now this just makes me wonder how PlayStation made that fast SSD they keep talking about

[@mysterychemical]

QLC should be cheapest option to long time HDD users. But, you should only go with QLC drive if it is cheaper at least 30% than TLC drive that is similar size and equivalent model. And never go NVMe drive with QLC. The last tech for NVMe drive is TLC, that's it. QLC and worse tech than that is limited to and shouldn't be considered beyond SATA3.0. That's it.

[@martymcflyjr89]

Awesome, keep up the good work!

[@saifsohailkhan]

What does apple choose to use in there products? Also are they working on there own chip for storage or is that too out there?

[@EmilioFigueroa]

Used a laptop that had a 660p drive. Was 80% full and it still performed surprisingly fast. Curious to see if they hold up well over time

[@chrisipad4425]

Wonderful video, thanks!

[@slc9800gtx]

Excellent review

[@h00b00]

Should have mentioned the huge reliability advantage SSD, even the QLC ones, have over HDD. After having multiple internal and external drives fail on me, I was facing a choice: whether to invest in enterprise HDD or consumer SSD. I decided to slowly build up an SSD collection by adding 2TB every year starting with the MX500. Never buying Hard Dicks again.

[@jayasuriyas2604]

*disks

[@jiaxinli8811]

ADATA SU630 is QLC SSD with no DRAM cache, but is still the same or a little bit higher price as cheap TLC SSD

[@Jpwinks]

Very informative. Just bought a cheap WD 350 just for games and storing photos. Think i'll keep my hdd backup for photo for longer😅

[@NotEvenDeathCanSaveU]

1. NAS 2. Quality high capacity HDD/s 3. Mechanical software controlled switch so you can power on hdd/s only when accessing the NAS to prolong their lifespan significantly 4. GG

[@harishannamalai8669]

Great Video! Also, could you make a compilation on options long term archival storage for normal users. Waiting for video on RISC-V!

[@RobStevens64]

Why not a hybrid drive ... dedicated TLC (or maybe even SLC/MLC) for the cache, and the QLC chips exclusively for storage?

[@nezrealtan3875]

Nice channel, good job.

[@ronch550]

I've always been curious about QLC but even more so these days because I just saw this Lexar NM610 Pro 1TB selling for $37 (which I can get for $30 after coupon). That's from not just one reputable seller but several reputable sellers. Very compelling. However, while the product page says that it's a TLC drive, the low TBW of just 240TB for the 1TB model suggests that it's a QLC SSD. Some sites and Reddit discussions also say it's QLC. I'm inclined to believe it's QLC. But even if it's QLC, $30 is still friggin cheap. Question is, would it be good as a system drive? I'm now using a Kingmax PQ3480 512GB Gen.3x4 TLC drive. Is it worth throwing $30 to get the Lexar or should I just pass it up and just grab a few burgers?

[@salteh22]

Really good informative video

[@pankajrahi7737]

Please make video on testing technology of chip (on wafer) just befor being packed in DIP or SMD

[@isaactjones]

Say you RAID 0 two QLC SSD's. How would the cache situation get figured out? Would they combine their cache together, or would they run their cache's separately? Another question: Can the amount of cache bet set to a specific amount? Dynamic is cool and all, but say I know the maximum file sizes I would deal with regularly. I could then set apart a specified amount of the drive just for cache and maintain a fast SSD.

[@whatzause]

I care more about reliability (long term integrity of data) than price or size -or even speed (or the technology and infrastructure [material] that they’re made of). I’d love to have a 1TB thumb drive but am a little scared -each cell may be made of FEWER ATOMS, if you get my drift, thus easier to deplete. (In the days of mechanical hard drives, they increased capacity by sticking a second identical platter into the same-sized case!! Can you advise or console me?😊?)

[@9xqspx6]

In short: QLC is a newer technology than TLC, but it's slower and has about 1/3 of lifetime.

[@salty4]

Will be waiting for the risc v video 🖐🖐.

[@atikzawad5766]

The question is "Is it enough for Call of Duty Modern Warfare?"

[@tommybro5313]

8 TB pal

[@Chuck_vs._The_Comment_Section]

Speaking of SSDs: Why is SATA still the dominant interface for drives? Sooner or later, the up to 600 MB/s of SATA will simply become hopelessly obsolete and more and more a bottleneck. It's not like there aren't alternatives that can achieve much higher speeds. U.2, U.3 and SAS.

[@timng9104]

quite well-explained! since you talked about floating gates and even SONOS, try emerging memories like RRAM and FTJ. the mechanisms are crazier than FN tunnelling XD

[@relaxingnature2617]

The prices still need to drop by 4x to compete with HDs for bulk storage

[@ticogis]

great videos ! just love it

[@mr2octavio]

What about the band tech on HDD, have you made a video about them? (I mean the tech that made the news a few weeks ago about NAS storage being used with that crappy system)

[@abhijeetgolliwar]

This is great series by engadget...

[@lasue7244]

Mhmm. Yes. I totally agree and I understood everything you said. *proceeds to watch again with electronics book opened*

[@super8mmo]

Graphene.

[@zorintoto1167]

Asphalt

[@garciaoneris]

There is a guy having a heatstroke at 4:14 standing next to that light pole on the street!!!!!!

[@rod4eva]

Scrolling through my feed not paying attention had me legitimately read the title as "UPS Called" 🤷🏽‍♂️

[@AryanSingh-ty8hc]

Does qlc speed decrease overtime

[@tgoddard1988]

It is getting a bit ridiculous with memory, we don’t seem to be making many strides other than just increasing the amount we can store, but sacrificing cost and speed... we really need a breakthrough in memory storage, maybe a new way of doing it? I have about 120GB on my phone and memory card combined, that’s actually almost at capacity due to OS, apps, images, personal videos and music... but rather than increasing my on board memory, I think it’s actually easier, safer and cheaper to just upload it to online storage, I have google drive which automatically uploads my videos and pics so I can clear my older stuff and gain about 22GB, but with all the apps I need to have on my phone for work, shopping and games, that’ll get swallowed up so quickly! BTU then for someone like my France who is a pc gamer, more local memory is crucial! I believe at least a couple of his games take up to 100GB! Though I’m a massive supporter of cloud gaming and again feel it is the way of the future. To be honest we really are overdue some jumps in technologies, battery technology I think will be the first to hit, but as mentioned, it’s long overdue and very much needed! processor technologies have been the only tech that has seen a mostly gradual increase over the years, but we are close to hitting the density ceiling... Memory is something that I’m not sure will see a massive boost any time soon, with all the content creators and scientific institutions out there struggling to keep up with demand (for more info watch Linus tech tips and slow mo guys), I haven’t really seen anything promising in the field since flash...

[@LittleMan2225]

Hmm, I disagree with you in pretty much all of your comment. What do you mean by "increasing the amount we can store, but sacrificing cost and speed"? The cost of high quality SSDs has dramatically decreased in the past few years and the performance is getting better and better. You talk about a "long overdue revolution" but these are quite complex, and the thing is, we have not reached any limits for flash drives. Technology evolves until it is cheaper to move to a different technology than to continue investing in enhancing on the current one. I agree with you that batteries are long overdue for a paradigm shift, batteries are the bottleneck of any device that uses batteries. Batteries are expensive, fragile, highly pollutant and are pretty much the only thing that make a smartphone/laptop dangerous. But back to storage technologies, I think that the real problem for storage these days is that programmers don't care at all. Specially in the gaming industry. Go back 5 years in time and compare the install size of games, it is bizarre how much it changed for a small visual boost. The same also applies for mobile apps, why there are so many simple apps that take 300mb of storage on my device? Uber has a "standard" app that is 200mb big and their app is basically a website that I could visit through Safari, they even got to fit all the features of the app on a lite version of Uber which is called "Uber Lite", the total size of Uber Lite is 5mb. Why is software so bad these days? It keeps getting bigger, requiring more ram, requiring more processor power, without really doing anything new.

[@gangadharchintapalli3667]

Isn't Writing a bit is status 0 and erase bit status is 1 in NAND?

[@Myself-yh9rr]

I would not trust ANY flash memory as storage for my only copy of a file. I would want those files on something more tried and true like a hard drive. Though the data can fade away slowly over time it fades quicker on flash memory. The more layers each cell has the faster it is. Maybe it becomes corrupt rather than fading considering all of the voltages that are involved when more layers per cell are in use. SSDs may be fine for some people but I would rather use QLC to bring files to another computer or another person. That is if they are big enough that sending them over the internet would take too long. Really it is great that there are budget SSDs but really sometimes you can pay just slightly more and get a better one or at least one with a higher TBW or maybe longer warranty. If reliability is what you want vs lowest cost per GB look at enterprise grade drives. Some of them are only slightly more expensive per GB but may have a much higher TBW than that budget generic drive you found on eBay!

[@emrexis]

What camera are u using? it could be just me the video looks sharper :)

[@schwartzmatthewe]

Words and mouth being so far off is weird lol

You remember a time when you could make a sandwich waiting for Photoshop to start up? Oh, you young'uns. I remember a time when you could raise a pig, slaughter it, prepare and cure the ham, *then* make cheese from the milk of a cow you raised, and then grow the wheat and bake the "bread" from it… for that ham-and-cheese sandwich. While waiting for a game to load from cassette.

[@impoppy9145]

TLDR. I bought a Samsung 1TB QLC ssd and installed my windows 10 on it. BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER. When I install a game, the whole system freezes and grinds to a hault. Much worse than my USB hard drive. I moved my system back to my cheap Kingston A400 256 GB and maaaan it is now lightning fast again. Note to myself: NEVER EVER BUY ANY QLC SSD. Waste of money.

[@WilliamChoochootrain]

Friendship ended with *THE VERGE* ❌ ❌ Now *ENGADGET* is my best friend

[@shis10]

Awesome video

[@bamasutradhar9918]

Yes original audio is replaced

[@Niko-zl5hn]

you look that one guy from College humor

[@piotrkozowski4230]

Qlc is broken they should just use more advanced node and tlc nand

[@316bash]

there is a syc issue with the audio

[@williamtetrault1300]

Whoa! Hell of a lot of info here and he talks fast enough to make taking the time to properly digest it all a waste of effort! Guess I’ll have to listen to the video a few times so I can absorb more of it.

[@RBFR01]

I was watching the cars drive past sorry what were you saying?

How do QLC SSDs compare to SMR HDDs? ;-)

[@humberabdulah4733]

this information is the only i need to conquer the world so much memory on it

[@valent666]

He must be using QLC to encode this out of sync video

[@Olivia-W]

No, I just got an MLC drive. Ha! Yeah, yeah, I'd be fine with a TLC. Passing on QLC for now.

[@BUBBLETEABOY]

This guy is so smart

[@wdvhi]

this is some high end stuff for me to process

[@mohitnandgirikar7972]

What's up with the voice delaying after just the starting 30 seconds of the video...

[@thepreserver83]

Buy just slc for the OS and you will be fine, also mlc for data.

[@fg3ify]

Try finding a SLC ssd. Even MLC ssds are increasingly rare, a popular example is the 970pro. A good tlc ssd is perfectly fine.

[@taegire]

SLC drives are only at the enterprise level, not even for consumers. The only MLC drives I know of are the Samsung Pro series Get MLC for your OS and TLC for your games,media production. Skip QLC all together. Even if you're replacing a hard drive in a console, get an TLC SATA SSD, they are not that much expensive than a QLC, for a lot better peformance

[@Myself-yh9rr]

It gets worse even. They are working on pentalevel cell I hear. How long will it be before you can only write to a drive 100 times IF you are lucky? I just hope when these fail they go into a write protect mode and give you a chance to copy your files from them. It is the very least they can do since they are working so hard to crapify storage devices in the consumer market.

[@Christian_Luczejko]

Nope. No idea. I’m lost. Edit: talks to me about software and I can follow along. But start talking about hardware and I may as well be ICP.

[@lasarith2]

It’s like using a piece of A4 paper , and when writing with a pencil you can write something down and erase it 100,000x but the newer A3 paper can only be written to 1000x (bigger paper but less can be written to it) I hope that helps lol.

[@Narmi804]

8TB that can fit inside your pocket (with a case of course), no need extra bulky power supply and can connect to phone. It's a win. 3 of my 2TB 2.5" external drive crashed which is very frustrating. I believe that QLC is here to fix that. Price will catch up soon enough.

[@200Carl]

Enquanto isso no Brasil mal tem SSD comum

[@heretustay]

Are the graphs and graphics stuttering for anyone else?

[@mqcapps]

Oh boy.... after i mortgage my entire neighborhood...and use the coupons...i can afford one

[@AussieAcorn]

Simple answer is yes. QLC SSD is way out of the line.

[@M3h3ndr3]

FASTER!

[@kevikiru]

Seems you had to fire your editor because this audio is not synced at all!!!

[@houghwhite411]

in 3 years of use I only have 5tbw I think I am eligible for qlc

[@frozenstarlight3132]

it's super out of sync, might just be me but I couldn't fix the problem edit: nvm lol just wasn't paying attention that well

[@AdamQueen]

More and more complex cache hierarchy means more and more bugs in firmware. Just see how many bcache data loss bugs there are, not to mention the firmware guys won't even be as good as kernel developers. There are already HDD not following FLUSH/FUA command, which can lead to easy corruption. It won't surprise me that we would hit more and more SSDs which don't do proper FLUSH/FUA and could cause random data loss after power loss. We're coming into the age of more and more unreliable hardware, and I really hope SSD won't go the same direction again.