Best 4TB SSD for PS5: 10 Ranked, and the Speed Numbers That Don't Add Up

It sits first because it is the only drive here that Sony has officially tested and licensed, and because its 4.7 average comes from 11,325 ratings — the second-largest base in the round-up, behind only the SN850X. At £413.99 it also undercuts the SN850X 4TB by £86.00, despite carrying the same 7,300MB/s read claim, and it is the most affordable drive among the best 4TB SSD for PS5 options that come with a heatsink already fitted.

The engineering is straightforward: a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe drive in M.2 2280, with a heatsink that carries the PlayStation logo and is shaped for the console's own bay, so installation needs no modification. WD_BLACK quotes 7,300MB/s read and 6,600MB/s write for the 2TB and 4TB models. In practice the console's Gen4 interface is the ceiling, not the drive. Worth noting: the spec table's Data Transfer Rate field reads 7,300 megabits per second, while the Read Speed field a few lines away says 7,300 megabytes per second.

Skip it if price per terabyte is your only metric — the Acer GM7000 is £411.98 and the fanxiang S660 is £399.99. Skip it too if the highest buyer average matters more than the official badge, because the Corsair MP600 PRO LPX scores 4.8 from 10,543 buyers. And if you want the extras a PC owner gets, such as dashboard software and encryption, this drive is not where they live.

It takes second place on buyer verdicts: 4.8 from 10,543 ratings, with 86% of them five-star. On paper it is the best 4TB M.2 SSD for PlayStation 5 here if you weight reviews above official licensing, and Corsair states it exceeds all Sony PS5 M.2 performance requirements. The quoted speeds are 7,100MB/s sequential read and 6,800MB/s sequential write.

A low-profile aluminium heatspreader is pre-fitted, so there is no extra part to buy and no clearance question to solve. The interface is PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.4, and the drive weighs 40g. The heatspreader's job is to hold sustained speed during a long install rather than to hit a peak number once — in theory the difference is minor, and in practice it is the number you notice when copying a 100GB game.

The catch is written into the listing itself. One bullet warns that international products have separate terms, are sold from abroad and may differ in fit, labelling and instructions. If a UK warranty process matters to you, that sentence is worth reading twice. Note also that its Data Transfer Rate field reads 7,100 megabits per second while the read speed is given in megabytes per second.

The SN850X has 15,665 ratings at 4.8 — the largest evidence base in this round-up — and 88% of them are five-star, the highest share among the three biggest-selling drives. The problem is the £499.99 price, which is £86.00 above the officially licensed SN850P for the same 7,300MB/s read claim. As a 4TB PCIe Gen4 SSD for PS5 it works; as a value proposition it does not lead.

It is built on Western Digital TLC 3D NAND with capacities listed up to 8TB, and the model name carries TCG Opal Encryption 2.0. The WD_BLACK Dashboard adds health monitoring and Game Mode 2.0 — however, the bullets state plainly that Dashboard is Windows only, so a PS5 owner gets none of those extras. Meanwhile the heatsink is described as an optional version, so confirm which variant you are ordering.

Two listing contradictions are worth checking before you buy. Its compatible-devices field lists PS5, while the console compatibility field names the Sony PlayStation 4. One of those fields is wrong and the advert does not say which. If you want the drive Sony licensed and a console-shaped heatsink in the box, buy the SN850P instead and keep the £86.

As a 4TB SSD with heatsink for PS5 it reads well on paper: 7,400MB/s read, 6,500MB/s write, PCIe Gen4, M.2 2280, with PlayStation 5 named in the console compatibility field. It ties the Acer GM7000 for the highest claimed read speed in this round-up. However, the advert's own spec table lists the media speed as 6,500 megabits per second, against a bullet three lines above that says 6,500MB/s — a factor of eight, inside one listing.

The design is DRAM-less and depends on Host Memory Buffer 3.0, which borrows the host system's memory for caching instead. Lexar claims up to 40% lower power consumption than DRAM-cached Gen4 drives, and the metal heatsink is fitted in the box. For a PS5 install that is the detail that matters: sustained writes during a 100GB game copy, not the peak read figure on the front.

That said, £499.99 is a lot for a DRAM-less drive, and 1,528 ratings is roughly a tenth of the feedback behind the SN850P. If you want the best 4TB SSD for PS5 by price, this is not it. If you want the highest claimed read speed and can accept a thinner review record, this and the Acer GM7000 are the two candidates.

At £411.98 it is the cheapest drive in this list that claims 7,400MB/s read — £2.01 below the licensed pick at the top and £88.01 below the SN850X. It is a PS5 4TB storage expansion on paper, with the PS5 named in both the compatible devices and the console compatibility fields. It also carries an independent DRAM cache, which the Lexar NM790 and the Fikwot FX991 do not.

Cooling is where it differs from everything above it. Instead of a finned heatsink, Acer fits a graphene cooling pad and claims it dissipates heat well enough to prevent throttling under sustained load. Random performance is quoted at 1,300K read IOPS and 1,100K write IOPS. The box contents list Acronis True Image software rather than mounting hardware, which means you supply the screw yourself.

Do not buy it expecting a plug-and-play console fit: two of the drives above ship with metal heatsinks and this one does not. Its 3,143 ratings are respectable but around a third of the Corsair's. Either way, at £411.98 it is the price leader among the fast drives, and the 5-year product assurance is stated in its own bullets.

Sixth, on the strength of the highest claimed read figure here: 7,450MB/s, with 6,500MB/s write and up to 1,000K random IOPS. As a 4TB NVMe SSD for PS5 it is well specified and priced at £429.99, mid-pack in this list. Crucially, though, this is also where the buyer evidence starts to thin: 4.5 from 899 ratings is the lowest average of the six drives above the £450 mark.

The design uses HMB rather than an onboard DRAM cache, plus a composite power management IC and a graphite heat sink over the NAND. Biwin also bundles its Biwin Intelligence backup software free with the drive. The box contents list an SSD, a screw and a manual, so unlike the Acer you do get the mounting hardware.

Buy it if you want the biggest read number and the software bundle; skip it if you want a metal heatsink or a long track record. Seven buyers out of 899 gave it one star, roughly one in 128. Even so, at 899 ratings this is a drive you are taking more on trust than on evidence, which means its headline 7,450MB/s should carry less weight than 15,665 ratings for the SN850X.

The FX991 earns its place in a best 4TB SSD for PS5 list with endurance and price rather than speed. It quotes 2,400TBW — the highest figure stated by any drive here — for £429.99, with a 5-year EU spare-part availability window. It also has 2,758 ratings at 4.4.

It uses HMB and a smart SLC cache, plus adaptive temperature and power management that Fikwot says adjusts heat and power draw automatically. The bundled heatsink is graphite rather than metal, and the box contents confirm that. Efficiency is quoted at up to 40% better performance-per-watt than the previous Gen4 model, which matters far more in a laptop than in a console that is plugged into the mains.

By contrast with the drives above it, the advert's own numbers disagree. The bullets promise 7,300MB/s read and 6,300MB/s write; the spec table gives 7,000MB/s read and a media speed of 6,200MB/s — 300MB/s and 100MB/s lower, in the same listing. Add the lowest average rating here at 4.4 with 9 one-star reviews, and this is a budget endurance pick, not a speed pick.

Eighth, and the cheapest 4TB drive in this round-up at £399.99 — £11.99 below the Acer and £100.00 below the SN850X. It is not the best 4TB PS5 SSD on speed, and its own advert says so twice over: the bullet promises up to 5,000MB/s read, while the Read Speed field gives 4,800MB/s. The Data Transfer Rate field shuffles the units again, reading 5,000 megabits per second.

It is a PCIe 4.0 drive in M.2 2280 with a grey heatsink that the bullets say may require manual installation, so budget ten minutes and a screwdriver. fanxiang claims 88 hours of testing and states a 5-year warranty. Capacities run from 500GB to 4TB, so the 4TB version is not a one-off production run.

Skip it if you move large games around often and want the fastest installs; at 5,000MB/s it sits at the bottom of this list on claimed speed, level with the Ediloca EN760. It is a reasonable choice for parking a large library of PlayStation titles you only play occasionally. Worth noting as well: the spec table lists a Hard Disk Rotational Speed of 4,500, a field with no meaning on a solid state drive.

Ninth: £459.99 for a 4TB PCIe Gen4 SSD for PS5 that claims the same 5,000MB/s read and 4,500MB/s write as the fanxiang above it, which costs £60.00 less. What that premium buys is an aluminium heatsink, mounting screws and a screwdriver in the box, plus a stated 2,800TBW endurance rating. The spec table and the bullets agree on the 5,000MB/s figure, which is not true of every drive here.

The NAND is 3D QLC with a dynamic SLC cache, so short bursts run at full speed while long sustained writes fall back to QLC rates. The M.2 2280 form factor is listed as compatible with PS5, Windows PCs, Mac and Linux. Ediloca states a 5-year limited service with lifetime technical assistance.

With 840 ratings and 77% five-star, this has one of the thinnest feedback records in the list, and 4 buyers gave it one star. It is not the best 4TB SSD for PS5 for sustained writes once the SLC cache fills up. Buy it for the bundled heatsink and tools; look at the £411.98 Acer if you want more speed for less money. The form factor field, incidentally, reads 2280 Inches, which is not a measurement.