Western Digital has announced the WD_Black SN850 NVMe SSD for PS5 Consoles, a ever-so-subtle variant of the regular SN850 drive, but one that comes as the first officially licensed M.2 NVMe SSD for PlayStation 5.
Available now from the Western Digital online store and from mid-August from other retailers, the SN850 for PS5 will sell for £179.99 GBP for 1TB and £289.99 GBP for 2TB. This comes with the pre-installed heatsink, so all you need to do is pop it into your PS5, and you’ve more than doubled your internal storage.
Having an officially licensed product is important to help some console owners navigate the tricky waters of learning about and understanding the requirements Sony has in place for PS5 SSDs. To guarantee that an expansion SSD is able to match the speeds of the custom designed SSD storage built into the console, Sony stated that they must be PCIe 4.0 and have read speeds of over 5,500MB/s. Additionally they should have a heatsink installed to ensure their longevity in use.
The blue light (and official licensing) costs extra.
Up until about a year ago, that was a pretty rare and expensive combination, and even today you will find PS5 compatible SSDs in a jumble with older and slower drives. Having a PS5 licensed sticker helps cut through that.
But… the only physical difference between the ‘for PS5’ SSD and the regular SN850 with heatsink is that the LED on it lights up blue instead of orange. For that minor change (which you cannot see within the PS5), the ‘for PS5’ 1TB SSD is £180, while the standard 1TB SN850 with heatsink is £169 on Western Digital’s own storefront. This drive has also been available since October 2020, with market competition driving the price down so that this same 1TB SN850 with heatsink is currently £125 on Amazon, where it’s prominently marketed as being PS5 compatible.
So yes, it’s great to see verified PS5 compatible SSDs with Sony’s blessing, but as always, that licensing comes with a cost to the purchaser and you can get the exact same drive (with a different coloured LED) for £50 less.
Of course, this is still a somewhat preferable situation to adding storage on Xbox Series X|S. There you only have a single option for your SSD through a partnership with Seagate, and there’s no support for generic SSDs of any kind.
Source: press release
