If you still think “MLC is required for reliability,” you’re using a 2015 rulebook in a 2026 storage world.

If you’ve been around flash storage long enough, you probably remember when choosing NAND felt like a moral decision. SLC was “the good stuff,” MLC was the responsible compromise, and TLC was the thing you avoided unless cost mattered more than sleep. For a long time, that thinking made sense.

But here’s the reality in 2026: the MLC vs TLC debate is mostly historical. Not because MLC disappeared overnight, and not because endurance stopped mattering—but because the way flash storage is engineered today has fundamentally changed what matters.

This article isn’t here to pretend MLC and TLC are identical. They aren’t. Instead, the goal is to explain why the “requirement” to choose MLC over TLC no longer applies the way it once did, and why TLC is now the accepted, proven norm in mass storage environments—including some of the most demanding systems on the planet.