Year: 2024

When it comes to boosting your system’s performance, upgrading to one of the fastest SSDs is a no-brainer. Whether you’re building a gaming PC, speeding up an older laptop or simply craving lightning-fast load times, an SSD is the way to go. Unlike traditional hard drives, SSDs rely on NAND flash storage, meaning you get faster data transfer speeds, improved reliability and a more responsive experience overall.

Modern SSDs are quite versatile, catering to everyone from gamers chasing the best performance to those hunting for the best budget options that still deliver solid speed. Pair a quality SSD with a powerful GPU, and you’re set for seamless gaming and multitasking. Plus, with advanced firmware improving efficiency and durability, SSDs are now better than ever at handling high-intensity workloads. In this buying guide, we’ll explore the best SSDs on the market, whether you’re after raw speed, affordability or a combination of the two.

Best SSDs in 2025

How we test SSDs

I’ve either tested or personally use daily every SSD recommended on this list. Out of our top picks, I bought four with my own money after doing about a dozen hours of research. Separately, Engadget Senior Reporter Jeff Dunn has also tested a handful of our recommendations, including the Crucial X9 Pro listed above.

What to look for in a PC SSD

The most affordable way to add fast storage space to a computer is with a 2.5-inch SATA drive. It’s also one of the easiest if you don’t want to worry about compatibility since almost every computer made in the last two decades will include a motherboard with Serial ATA connections. For that reason, the best SATA SSDs are an excellent choice if you want to extend the life of an older PC build. Installation is straightforward, too. Once you’ve secured the internal SSD in a drive cage, all you need to do is to connect it to your motherboard and power supply.

The one downside of SATA drives is that, in terms of responsiveness, they’re slower than their high-performance NVMe counterparts, with SATA III limiting data transfers to 600MB/s. But even the slowest SSD will be significantly faster than the best mechanical drives. And with high-capacity, 1TB SATA SSDs costing about $100, they’re a good bulk-storage option.

If your PC is newer, there’s a good chance it includes space for one or more M.2 SSDs. The form factor represents your ticket to the fastest SSDs on the market, but the tricky part is navigating all the different standards and specs involved.

M.2 drives can feature either a SATA or PCIe connection. SSDs with the latter are known as Non-Volatile Memory or NVMe drives and are significantly faster than their SATA counterparts, with Gen3 models offering sequential write speeds of up to 3,000MB/s. These drives rely on NVMe NAND technology for their superior performance and durability. You can get twice the performance with a Gen4 SSD, but you’ll need a motherboard and processor that supports the standard.

If you’re running an AMD system, that means at least a Ryzen 3000 or 5000 CPU and an X570 or B550 motherboard. With Intel, meanwhile, you’ll need at least an 11th or 12th Gen processor and a Z490, Z590 or Z690 motherboard. Keep in mind that Gen4 SSDs typically cost more than their Gen3 counterparts as well.

More expensive still are the latest Gen5 models, which offer sequential read speeds of up to 16,000MB/s. However, even if your computer supports the standard, you’re better off buying a more affordable Gen4 or Gen3 drive. At the moment, very few games and applications can take advantage of Gen3 NVMe speeds, let alone Gen4 and Gen5 speeds. What’s more, Gen5 NVMe drives can run hot, which can lead to performance and longevity issues. Your money is better spent on other components, like upgrading your GPU, for now.

As for why you would buy an M.2 SATA drive over a similarly specced 2.5-inch drive, it comes down to ease of installation. You add M.2 storage to your computer by installing the SSD directly onto the motherboard. That may sound intimidating, but in practice the process involves a single screw that you first remove to connect the drive to your computer and then retighten to secure the SSD in place. As an added bonus, there aren’t any wires involved, making cable management easier.

Note that you can install a SATA M.2 SSD into an M.2 slot with a PCIe connection, but you can’t insert an NVMe M.2 SSD into a M.2 slot with a SATA connection. Unless you want to continue using an old M.2 drive, there’s little reason to take advantage of that feature. Speaking of backward compatibility, it’s also possible to use a Gen4 drive through a PCIe 3 connection, but you won’t get any of the speed benefits of the faster NVMe.

One last thing to consider is that M.2 drives come in different physical sizes. From shortest to longest, the common options are 2230, 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110. (The first two numbers represent width in millimeters and the latter denote the length.) For the most part, you don’t have to worry about that since 2280 is the default for many motherboards and manufacturers. Some boards can accommodate more than one size of NVMe SSD thanks to multiple standoffs. That said, check your computer’s documentation before buying a drive to ensure you’re picking up a compatible size.

If you’re buying a replacement SSD for the Steam Deck or Steam Deck OLED, things are less complicated. For Valve’s handheld, you will need a 2230 size NVMe. Simple. If you don’t want to open your Steam Deck, it’s also possible to expand its storage by installing a microSD card. Engadget has a separate guide dedicated to SD card storage, so check that out for additional buying advice.

I alluded to this earlier, but the best buying advice I can offer is don’t get too caught up about being on the bleeding edge of storage tech. The sequential read and write speeds you see manufacturers list on their drives are theoretical and real-world performance benchmark tests vary less than you think.

If your budget forces you to choose between a 1TB Gen3 NVMe and a 512GB Gen4 model, go for the higher-capacity one. From a practical standpoint, the worst thing you can do is buy a type of SSD that’s too small for needs. Drives can slow dramatically as they approach capacity, and you will probably end up purchasing one with a larger storage capacity in the future.

What to look for in portable and USB flash drives

Portable SSDs are a somewhat different beast to their internal siblings. While read and write speeds are important, they are almost secondary to how an external drive connects to your PC. You won’t get the most out of a model like the SanDisk Extreme Pro V2 without a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x 2 connection. Even among newer PCs, that’s something of a premium feature. For that reason, most people are best off buying a portable drive with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 or Thunderbolt connection. The former offers transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps. The best external hard drives also allow you to transfer data from your Windows PC to a Mac, or other device, if compatible. Be sure to consider this beforehand if you plan to use your portable drive across multiple devices.

Additionally, if you plan to take your drive on trips and commutes, it’s worthwhile to buy a model with IP-certified water and dust proofing. Some companies like Samsung offer rugged versions of their most popular drives with a high endurance rating. For additional peace of mind, 256-bit AES hardware encryption will help prevent someone from accessing your data if you ever lose or misplace your external SSD.

Some of the same features contribute to a great thumbstick drive. Our favorite picks for best budget external SSD models feature USB 3.0 connections and some form of hardware encryption.

A note on console storage

Seagate

If PC gaming isn’t your thing and you own an Xbox Series X|S or PS5, outfitting your fancy new console with the fastest possible storage is far more straightforward than doing the same on PC. With a Series X or Series S, your options are limited to options from Seagate and Western Digital. The former offers 512GB, 1TB and 2TB models, with the most affordable starting at a not-so-trivial $90. Western Digital’s Expansion Cards are less expensive, with pricing starting at $80 for the 512GB model. The good news is that both options are frequently on sale. Your best bet is to set an alert for the model you want by using a price tracker like CamelCamelCamel.

With Sony’s PlayStation 5, upgrading the console’s internal storage is slightly more involved. Instead of employing a proprietary solution, the PS5 uses NVMe storage. Thankfully, there aren’t as many potential configurations as you would find on a PC. Engadget maintains a comprehensive guide to the best SSDs for PS5; in short, your best bet is a high-capacity Gen4 drive with a built-in heatsink. Check out that guide for a full list of gaming SSD recommendations, but for a quick go-to, consider the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX I recommend above. It meets all the memory specifications for Sony’s latest console and you won’t run into any clearance issues with the heatsink. Corsair offers 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB versions of the drive. Expect to pay about $110 for the 1TB variant and about $200 for 2TB.

For those still playing on a previous generation console, you can get slightly faster game load times from a PlayStation 4 by swapping the included hard drive to a 2.5-inch SSD, but going out of your way to do so probably isn’t worth it at this point and you’re better off saving your money for one of the new consoles.

SSD FAQs

What size SSD is best?

There is no one size fits all rule for SSDs, but we generally recommend getting at least a 1TB SSD if you’re looking to upgrade PC or game console storage, or looking to add an external drive to your toolkit. A 1TB drive will be plenty for most people who need extra storage space for photos, documents and programs. If you’re a hardcore gamer, you may want to invest in even more storage considering many high-profile titles today can take up a ton of space.

Is a 256GB SSD better than a 1TB hard drive?

The short answer is that it depends on what you need your drive for. In general, SSDs are faster and more efficient than HDDs, but HDDs are usually cheaper. We recommend springing for an SSD for most use cases today — upgrading a PC, saving important photos and documents, storing games long term, etc. But if you’re focused on getting the most amount of extra space possible (and sticking to a budget), an HDD could be a good option for you.

Does bigger SSD mean faster?

Getting a bigger SSD doesn’t always translate into a faster drive overall. A bigger SSD will provide a higher storage capacity, which means more space for storing digital files and programs. To understand how fast an SSD will be, you’ll want to look at its read/write speeds: read speeds measure how fast a drive can access information, while write speeds measure how fast the drive can save information. Most SSDs list their approximate read/write speeds in their specs, so be sure to check out those numbers before you make a purchase.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-ssds-140014262.html?src=rss

There’s no longer any question that Threads and Bluesky have created the most viable alternatives to the platform once known as Twitter. But while the two services may share some of the same goals, they’ve shown very different visions for how text-based social networks should operate.

Threads, of course, is controlled by Meta, which is controlled by Mark Zuckerberg. And though the company has claimed to embrace “public conversation,” it has also consistently put its thumb on the scale to encourage certain types of speech over others. The company throttled “political” content in an election year, forcing users to tweak their settings to enable posts about elections or “social topics” to appear in their “for you” feed.

This desire to limit any of what Meta described as “potentially sensitive” content has also led to some questionable moderation decisions. For months, the app prevented users from searching for some topics, including those related to COVID-19 and vaccines. Those limits have since been lifted, but there have been numerous and inexplicable instances of other moderation failures on Threads.

In October, Instagram head Adam Mosseri admitted the company had “found mistakes and made changes” after users reported their accounts had been penalized for using mundane words like “saltines” and “cracker.” Earlier this month,, Meta’s communications director Andy Stone apologized after users noted that searches for posts about Austin Tice, the American journalist who disappeared in Syria in 2012, were blocked on the app because the content “may be associated with the sale of drugs.” Stone didn’t offer an explanation but said the issue has been addressed.

Bluesky, on the other hand, has taken less of a top-down approach to moderation. While the company employs some of its own moderators to enforce “baseline moderation,” users have a lot of control over how much questionable or harmful content they want to see. Blueksy also allows people to create their own moderation services for an even more custom experience.

“Moderation is in many ways, like governance,” Bluesky CEO Jay Graber told me earlier this year. “And setting the norms of a social space, we don’t think one person or one company should be unilaterally deciding that for an entire ecosystem where people are having public conversations important to the state of the world.”

That philosophy plays out in other important ways. Twitter was never a major source of traffic for most publishers, even before Elon Musk’s takeover. But the platform once played a vital role in the news ecosystem. At a time when Elon Musk has acknowledged that X penalizes posts with links and Threads’ top exec has said that Meta doesn’t want to “encourage” hard news, Bluesky’s leaders have actually tried to foster link sharing, and several publishers have reported seeing significantly more traffic from Bluesky, compared with Threads and X.

But perhaps the most obvious difference between Meta and Bluesky’s approach is in what order posts even appear. Bluesky defaults to a reverse chronological feed that shows posts from accounts you follow. Users can also choose to add custom feeds based on hundreds of different topics. For example, I follow a “cat pics” feed that surfaces posts with photos of cats and a “trending news” feed that surfaces links to news stories that are being shared widely on the platform.

And while Meta has recently come out with its own version of custom feeds, the app still defaults to an algorithmic “for you” feed that surfaces a mix of content users actually want and unasked-for drivel that’s so random and bizarre it’s been compared to a gas leak. (Meta said it would test allowing users to make their following feed the default, but hasn’t provided an update.) It’s also telling that even the content creators getting paid hundreds or thousands of dollars to post on Threads don’t really understand the platform.

There are even more significant changes coming in 2025. While both Threads and Bluesky have so far been blissfully ad-free, both services will need to eventually make money.

Bluesky has so far experimented with other ways of making money, including selling custom domains and an upcoming subscription service that will offer extra features to paying users. Though Graber hasn’t entirely ruled out advertising, she’s also been clear that she doesn’t want to “enshittify” the service for the sake of advertising.

Threads, on the other hand, is already attached to Meta’s multi-billion dollar ad machine, an entity so intrusive many people believe the company’s apps literally listen to their conversations (a theory that’s been repeatedly debunked.) Though Zuckerberg has indicated the company isn’t in a rush to turn Threads into a “very large business,” it could see its first ads in January, according to reports, and there’s little reason to believe Meta won’t eventually employ the same playbook it has with all its other services.

All this makes Bluesky even more of an underdog. Threads is already more than 10 times its size and Meta has made it clear it has no problem using its copy-or-kill tactics against the upstart.

But that’s also exactly why so many Bluesky users fervently believe that the platform is the one that “has the juice.” While Threads and X put public conversations in the hands of autocratic billionaires, Bluesky is an independent entity and has structured its platform much more democratically. The platform has had its share of moderation controversies, but it puts far more control in the hands of its users. It’s welcomed developers, who have created dozens of third-party apps for the service.

All that may not ultimately be enough to fend off Meta, which can afford to throw billions of dollars at Threads. But Bluesky’s vision for an open-source decentralized platform is about much more than becoming the next big social media site. “We set out to change the way social media works from the bottom up,” Graber said during a recent press event. “I want us to have choice over what we see.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/bluesky-and-threads-showed-us-very-different-visions-for-a-post-x-future-171046336.html?src=rss