Best 4TB SSDs for PS5 of 2026

If this is your first time inside a console, the P310 is the drive that makes the job uneventful. The heatsink arrives attached rather than in a bag with a square of tape, and the whole assembly drops into the 2280 slot and sits under the bay cover without argument. That's what we care about most for a first install: nothing to assemble, nothing to measure, nothing to second-guess while your console is open on the table.

We also like how unremarkable it is once it's in. It's a Micron-built drive rated at 7,100/6,000 MB/s, comfortably past what the console asks for, with the five-year cover you want on something holding a whole library. In our testing the PS5 saw it, formatted it, and installed to it exactly like internal storage. The bundled Adobe Creative Cloud trial is a PC freebie; don't let it sway a console purchase.

Set it beside our top pick and the gap is on paper only: 7,100/6,000 against 7,400/6,500, and a rating a tenth lower. Neither number reaches the console's ceiling, so what's left is money, since the Crucial comes in a little under the Lexar, and the reassurance of a name you probably already own in a laptop or a work PC. For a pure console purchase, that's the whole calculation.

The 990 PRO sits at the top of this group's price range, and some of that is earned: 7,450/6,900 MB/s is the highest pair of numbers here, the integrated heatsink is slim enough to sit under the PS5's bay cover, and this version was built with the console in mind rather than added to a compatibility list afterwards.

Heat is the strongest part of the story. The slim heatsink holds temperature steady through long sessions and we saw no sign of throttling when the drive was working hard. Recognition is the wobble: a unit that doesn't appear in the storage menu on first boot needs reseating in the slot before you conclude it's dead. That's a two-minute fix, but it's the thing worth knowing before the panel comes off.

So is the premium worth paying? Only if the drive will also live in a desktop. The extra random performance, the hardware encryption and Samsung's software all matter to Windows and none of them matter to a PlayStation, where load times are governed by the console rather than the drive. If it's console-only, the Lexar or the Crucial does the same job and the difference goes toward games.

Most drives on this page are console parts that happen to work in a desktop. The SN850X is the other way round: a PC gaming drive with a PlayStation badge on the compatibility list, and the only pick here with real desktop software behind it. WD_BLACK Dashboard watches the drive's health and adjusts its lighting, and the drive itself adds Predictive Loading and Adaptive Thermal Management.

That software is why we pick it for a machine that's sometimes a console and sometimes a PC. 7,300/6,300 MB/s, a heatsink that clears the PS5's bay cover, five years of cover, and thermal management doing the boring work in the background. In the console it behaves like everything else here; on a desktop it's the one that tells you what it's doing.

Two things to weigh before paying the premium. WD's own listing says this generation has been replaced by a newer model, so you're buying the outgoing drive, which is fine if the price reflects it. And the price here is the second-highest in the group, for speeds that sit behind the Samsung, Lexar and Addlink on paper. For a drive that stays in a PS5 that's hard to justify; for one that splits its time, it's easier.

Addlink's answer to console heat is a grid of crosscut aluminum fins sitting on a thermal gel pad, and it's a more serious piece of hardware than the flat plates some drives here ship with. The claimed numbers match our top pick exactly at 7,400/6,500 MB/s, and the A93 costs less than anything else in this group. That combination earns it a place, and we have no reservations about fitting one.

It's a DRAM-less TLC drive with SLC caching and a five-year warranty, and it slides into the PS5's 2280 slot with the heatsink in place and the bay cover back on. Have a small Phillips screwdriver to hand, though: the box is the drive and a guide, and the screw you'll be reusing is the console's own.

What holds it back is history. There's far less of it behind the A93 than behind the Lexar or the Samsung, and PS5 recognition is where it slips: there are consoles that won't see it at first boot, and a return is the fix if yours is one of them. Buy it for the saving and the cooling, and pay more if you want a longer record behind the drive.

Onboard DRAM is the line that separates the XS70 from nearly everything else on this page. The drive keeps its mapping table on its own chip instead of borrowing the host's memory, which is the arrangement that holds up best when you push hundreds of gigabytes through in one go: moving a library, cloning a boot drive, rendering to disk. In a console you won't notice the difference; on a desktop you will.

The rest of the package is strong. 7,200/6,800 MB/s, 3,000 TBW level with our top pick for endurance, five years of cover, and a heatsink in a silicone sleeve that sits under the PS5's cover and stays put. We were happy to keep one in a console.

Where it loses ground is everything around the drive. It costs more than the Lexar and the Addlink for numbers that don't beat them, and the long-term picture is the least settled in this group, with drives that ran fine for months and then stopped being the caveat worth knowing. If DRAM is the thing you want, this is the pick; if you just want 4TB in a PS5, the cheaper drives above do the same job.

There's no heatsink in the FN955's box, just a graphite thermal pad and a bare 2280 drive. For a console that matters, because the PS5's bay expects a heatsink and a drive running without one under a heavy game is asking for trouble. Budget for an M.2 heatsink before you order, or plan to keep this one in a desktop where the airflow question is a different one.

Underneath that, it's a likeable drive: TLC NAND rather than the cheaper stuff, 7,300/6,300 MB/s, SLC caching, five years of cover, and a reliability record with nothing alarming in it. Installation is the usual single screw, and we had it running in the console without drama once it was cooled properly.

The problem is the arithmetic. Add a heatsink and the FN955 lands close to the Lexar, which arrives with its cooling attached and better endurance. That's not a knock on the Fikwot, which is a good drive at a fair price; it's that this particular job rewards buying the finished article.

Where it makes sense is when the heatsink is already in a drawer, or the destination is a PC rather than a console. The reason to buy it is the TLC NAND and the record behind it, not saving money on a PS5 install.