After almost a year and three months of PlayStation 5 being on sale, now is the right time to buy a PS5 SSD if you are running low on storage space.
Today, you can find some of the best ps5 SSDs available for just $150 / £150, with drives like the WD Black SN850 often on sale at the lowest price ever in the UK. In the US, GameStop Pro members can get the Samsung 980 Pro 1TB with a pre-installed heatsink to only $189.99that’s a lot on a new unit that was announced just a few months ago.
While some might scoff at paying over a hundred dollars for more storage space, the new pricing is a noticeable drop from the previous $290/£220 tags we were used to seeing. These deals are superior to what we’ve seen during black friday 2021also, where the discounts weren’t enough to make any unit worthy of an impulse purchase.
go bigger
If 1TB isn’t enough space, higher capacity 2TB drives have also received more generous discounts recently, with the Samsung 980 Pro 2TB now just £269.95 in the UK, which is significantly cheaper than the Eye-watering price tag of £444 (or about $592) we saw in December 2020.
That’s still not exactly affordable, mind you, but it’s significantly better value than it was just 12 months ago, which shows SSD prices are dropping at a steady rate. However, this trend may not continue as “material contamination” has affected some NAND flash production lines, which may result in a 5-10% price increase.
If you really want to get maximum value for your money before that happens, there are more savings to be had if you feel comfortable installing a heatsink – which is a requirement if you want to use an NVMe SSD in the PS5.
However, I personally recommend that most people get an SSD that has a pre-installed heatsink. Not only does this make installing a new unit a much less intimidating prospect, but you don’t have to worry about finding a heatsink that meets the exact dimensions described by Sony (this one will do the jobYet).
a prudent move
Time has shown that Sony’s decision to let users buy off-the-shelf NVMe SSDs was a shrewd one. While it was certainly frustrating that we weren’t able to expand the PS5’s storage at launch – and I still think making someone remove the PS5 covers and picking up a screwdriver is not very easy to use – turns out the long 10 month wait for Sony enable PS5 internal SSD drive may have been a good thing in hindsight.
The fact that Sony has not opted for a proprietary storage drive like Microsoft has with the Seagate 1TB Storage Expansion Card means that consumers are now reaping the benefits when it comes to pricing. There is a wide variety of units and capacities to choose from, and retailers are competing with each other to offer the best deals. This subsequently means that most NVMe drives are now noticeably cheaper than Microsoft’s storage solution. You also have that extra extra flexibility as these SSD drives will work on the PC.
In comparison, the cheapest Xbox Series X/S Seagate 1TB 1TB storage expansion card I’ve ever seen drop in the UK was £179.99, which is still more expensive than the equivalent NVMe SSDs that work with the PS5. You’re also limited to 500GB or 1TB of storage on the Xbox Series X/S, while PS5 users can install a 4TB SSD if they really want to.
That’s not to say that Microsoft’s decision to use a proprietary storage drive was necessarily wrong. The plug-in-and-play nature of the device is really great, and being able to use the SSD on multiple consoles or take it to a friend’s house is a really attractive selling point. The fact that the 1TB version of the drive was available at launch was also welcome, but of course Microsoft needs to make it more affordable now or offer more alternatives.
enjoying the space
There’s also an argument to be made that storage space is larger on the PS5 than the Xbox Series X. Even though the PS5 only comes with 667GB of usable storage space compared to 802GB on the Xbox Series X, Sony to be continued Kraken compression technology to a good use for downsizing games to more palatable sizes, which ends up preventing the space from being gobbled up too quickly.
We’ve seen file sizes on games like Subnautica go from 14GB on PS4 to just 3.5GB on PS5, and Control Ultimate Edition is 39% smaller on PS5 than Xbox Series X – 25.79GB compared to 42 .5 GB. If storage is cheaper and games are smaller in size on the PS5, then that’s a really compelling value proposition no matter how you shake it.
It might have taken longer than expected, so, but if you’re tired of deleting games from your PS5’s internal storage, there’s never been a better time to buy a PS5 SSD, and there are plenty of good PlayStation 5 SSD deals out there right now. same.
