Best 1TB SSD for PS5: 10 Ranked, From £135.99 to £199.99

Why it is here: £169.00 for a 1TB M.2 SSD for PlayStation 5 quoting 7,100 MB/s read, sold in the heatsink version that drops into the PS5 expansion bay without a separate shroud. Crucially, that figure sits above what any PS5 game will ask of the drive, so the console's bus, not the SSD, is the slower half of the pair.

In practice the P310 is a single-sided 2280 drive weighing 34.8 g with the heatsink fitted, backed by a 5-year limited warranty. Its media speed is quoted at 6,000 MB/s against the 7,100 MB/s read, a gap worth knowing if you write large files as well as install games.

Who should not buy it: anyone chasing the lowest price. It is £28.01 more than the SIX X7400 at £140.99 and £33.01 more than the fanxiang S660 at £135.99, and if your PS5 mainly runs older titles the cheaper drives will load them just as fast. Note too that Crucial's spec table lists the form factor as '2280 Millimetres' — 2.28 metres — which is a listing error rather than a different drive.

Why it is here: £155.99 for 1TB with 7,200 MB/s read and 6,200 MB/s write on PCIe 4.0, plus NVMe 2.0 support. It carries the highest average rating in this round-up at 4.8, with 2,553 ratings behind it — more than any drive here except the fanxiang S660 — which is why it takes second rather than first.

In practice the GM7 uses HMB and an SLC cache rather than its own DRAM chip, and Acer ships it with a graphene thermal pad instead of a metal heatsink. The listing still claims PS5 storage expansion, so check the fit before buying: the Crucial P310 and the Predator GM7000 arrive with proper heatsinks, this one does not.

The catch is in the numbers. The bullet says 7,200 MB/s; the Read Speed field says 7,400 MB/s; the Data Transfer Rate field says 7,200 MB/s again. Acer also lists the form factor as '2.5 Inches' on a 2280 M.2 drive, and an item weight of 4.5 g. Either way, no PS5 will notice 7,200 against 7,400 — what it will notice is £155.99 being the lowest price among the drives quoting 7,000 MB/s or more.

Why it is here: 7,400 MB/s read and 6,500 MB/s write, which makes it the quickest Gen4 NVMe 1TB for PS5 in this list on paper, and the heatsink is included rather than optional. It is also well rated for its sample size: 4.7 from 1,528 ratings.

In practice Lexar quotes up to 40% less power consumption than DRAM-cached Gen4 drives, because the NM790 uses Host Memory Buffer 3.0 rather than its own DRAM chip. That matters in a console bay, where the heatsink has to deal with whatever the drive produces under load. The enclosure is listed as polycarbonate.

That said, £189.99 is £34.00 more than the Acer GM7 for 200 MB/s of quoted read speed a PS5 cannot spend. Its spec table also disagrees with itself: the form factor is given as '0.23 Metres' (23 cm) and the media speed as '6500 megabits_per_second', a unit that does not match the 6,500 MB/s write figure in the bullets. If you want the largest read number, this is it — if you want the best 1TB SSD for PS5 on value, it is not.

Why it is here: 11,000 MB/s read and 9,500 MB/s write on PCIe 5.0, heatsink included, for £179.99. That is £10.99 more than the Gen4 Crucial P310 and it carries the same 5-year limited warranty. It sits fourth, not first, because of the console it is being bought for.

In theory a PS5 will run it: the listing states the drive is 'backwards compatible with PCIe 4.0 systems', and the single-sided 2280 design fits the bay. In practice the console links at PCIe 4.0, so the 3,900 MB/s of extra quoted read speed over the P310 does nothing for game loads. Crucial does claim almost 25% lower power draw than its previous Gen5 drive, which helps with heat.

However, the value case is thin. It is £20.00 cheaper than the Samsung 9100 PRO, which quotes 14,800/13,400 MB/s — again, numbers a PS5 will not spend. Its rating breakdown is the most split here, with 7% one-star against 81% five-star across 272 ratings, the second-smallest sample in the round-up. Crucial's spec table also lists the form factor as '2280 Millimetres', which is an error. Skip it unless you also own a Gen5 PC, where the extra speed finally shows.

Why it is here: £144.99 for 7,000 MB/s read and 5,000 MB/s write on PCIe 4.0, with 4.6 from 1,710 ratings. Those read figures sit 100 MB/s below the £169.00 Crucial P310's, for £24.01 less.

By contrast with most of this list, the £144.99 listing is the bare drive — the box contents field reads only 'Lexar 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD EQ790'. The heatsink version lists at £179.99 for identical quoted 7,000/5,000 MB/s figures, which works out at £35 for the metal. In practice a PS5 bay needs a heatsink, so the cheaper listing is not automatically the cheaper install.

Worth noting: the spec table gives the form factor as '22 Millimetres' rather than 2280, and the enclosure material as '3D Nand', which is the memory type, not an enclosure. And if you want the best 1TB SSD for PS5 on outright price, this is not it either — the fanxiang S660 is £135.99.

Why it is here: 7,400 MB/s read and 6,700 MB/s write with a 1 GB DRAM cache, wrapped in a metal heatsink Acer says reduces operating temperatures by up to 25%. That is the same quoted read speed as the Lexar NM790 for £3.30 less.

In practice DRAM matters less in a PS5 than on a desktop. Console workloads are mostly long sequential reads, where HMB drives like the GM7 and the NM790 already hold their own. Where the GM7000 earns its price is sustained writing and cloning, helped by the licensed Biwin True Image software in the box.

Even so, £186.69 is the second-highest price here, resting on the smallest sample of the ten at 143 ratings. Its spec table also disagrees with itself: read speed 7,400 MB/s, data transfer rate 7,200 MB/s. If you want the best internal SSD for PS5 purely for game loading, the cheaper drives do the same job; buy this one if you also want DRAM and a metal heatsink.

Why it is here: £149.99 buys 1TB on PCIe Gen4 with a heatsink, HMB and SLC cache. The bullet claims a maximum of 7,300 MB/s read and 6,200 MB/s write, which puts it above the cheaper SIX and fanxiang drives on quoted numbers.

However, the spec table gives the read speed as 7,100 MB/s and the data transfer rate as 7,300 MB/s, so the listing offers two different read figures and does not say which is the drive's sequential peak. On a console that changes little, where the interface and the heatsink decide compatibility rather than the headline number — but it does mean you cannot quote one read figure for this drive.

That said, this is a reasonable pick if you want a PS5 compatible SSD with heatsink under £150 without dropping to the fanxiang's 5,000 MB/s. Skip it if you want a long track record: 322 ratings is well short of the EQ790's 1,710 or the S660's 3,715, the enclosure material field says plastic, and one bullet refers to an 'FX991' rather than the FX910.

Why it is here: £140.99 for 7,350 MB/s read on PCIe Gen4, the second-lowest price among the best 1TB SSD for PS5 drives in this round-up. It undercuts the £155.99 Acer GM7 by £15.00 while quoting 150 MB/s more, and it ships with the mounting kit — screw and screwdriver — that the bare drives here leave you to find.

In practice the sample is more convincing than the price suggests: 687 ratings at 4.5, 78% of them five-star, with 6% one-star. A 5-year limited warranty is stated, along with 5 years of EU spare-part availability. Country of origin is listed as China.

The catch is in the spec table. Hardware connectivity reads 'PCI Express x8', which is not how an M.2 NVMe drive connects, and the media speed field reads 6,700 MB/s without saying whether that is a write figure. Even so, at £140.99 the only cheaper route into this list is the fanxiang S660 at £135.99.

Why it is here: £135.99 is the lowest price in the round-up, and 3,715 ratings at 4.6 is comfortably the largest sample of the ten. That is a lot of buyers for a brand most shoppers will not have heard of.

In practice the S660 quotes 5,000 MB/s read and 4,500 MB/s write, below every other drive here by at least 2,000 MB/s on read. The listing states PS5 compatibility and includes a heatsink, though it notes the heatsink 'may require manual installation'. A 700 TBW endurance figure and 5-year after-sale service are stated.

As a result this is the cheapest route to PS5 storage expansion 1TB, and for game storage alone that may be enough. Even so, 5,000 MB/s is the slowest quoted read figure in the round-up and 4,500 MB/s the slowest write, so anyone who also moves large video files should look at the £144.99 Lexar EQ790 instead. The compatibility field also lists Sony PlayStation 4 alongside the PlayStation 5.