Solid-state drives, more commonly known as SSDs, are the best storage option when it comes to speed. While hard drives are great for mass storage, they have very limited speed and poor reliability due to moving parts. SSDs eliminate these concerns.
As SSDs keep getting cheaper and more options hit the market, choosing the best SSDs can be an easy task. To help you decide, we’ve rounded up the best internal and external SSD picks on the market.
Buy the best SSD for your needs
Buying the best SSD doesn’t take too much thought, but there are a few things to consider. Like hard drives, SSDs are also available in internal and external models. With internal SSDs, however, there are several options.
Internal SSDs are available in SATA and PCIe interfaces. If you want to replace the hard drive in an old system, a SATA SSD is the way to go. A SATA SSD increases the performance of the aging interface. However, if you want the fastest of the fastest, a PCIe SSD is the way to go.
PCIe is a much faster interface, but it’s only available in newer systems. PCIe 3.0 is the norm right now, but PCIe 4.0 SSDs have recently hit the market. PCIe 4.0 SSDs give you even faster speeds, albeit at a high price. To ensure reliability, you need to check the mean time to failure (MTBF) and terabytes written (TBW). This is an endurance rating for the SSD.
With external SSDs, you can make your selection based on your use cases. Aside from the different speeds and a few extra features like biometric security, there isn’t much to distinguish, but there are plenty of options to choose from.
The best SSDs (internal and external)
Best internal SSDs
- The Samsung 980 Pro is the best SSD for most people and offers amazing speeds and high reliability with PCIe 4.0.
- The WD Black SN850 is the best SSD choice for gaming systems and offers world-class performance.
- The Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite is the ideal SSD and offers solid PCIe 4.0 speeds on a budget.
- The Samsung 870 Evo is a SATA SSD that offers excellent performance for systems with an aging SATA interface.
Best external SSDs
Best internal SSDs
Internal SSDs are a solid way to upgrade an old system. Internal SSDs are now the start-up boot devices and can help to drastically reduce the startup times of your system. An internal SSD also loads programs much faster. While this may not be the most economical solution for mass storage if you have the budget, you can also use an internal SSD to store your media. Here’s our round-up of the best internal SSD options out there.
Samsung 980 Pro: The Best SSD for Most People
Samsung is leading the way in solid-state drives with its NAND innovations. The Samsung 980 Pro is a PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive that claims twice the speed of PCIe 3.0 drives and is the absolute best SSD choice for most people. It promises sequential read speeds of up to 7,000 MB / s and sequential write speeds of 5,100 MB / s.
You can purchase the Samsung 980 Pro with capacity options of 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The cache can be up to 2 GB in size, depending on its capacity, and is supported by the Elpis controller from Samsung. They also have encryption with support for AES 256-bit, TCG / Opal and IEEE1667. Samsung rates the 980 Pro for 1.5 million hours of MTBF, up to 1200 TBW, and offers a five-year warranty.
WD Black SN850: The best SSD for gaming systems
Western Digital’s WD Black brand is a range of solutions focused on gaming. The WD Black SN850 matches the performance of the fastest SSDs you can buy right now and sports the cool black aesthetic. It achieves a sequential read speed of up to 7,000 MB / s and a sequential write speed of up to 5,300 MB / s, which makes it worth your gaming drive to be.
The WD Black SN850 comes with a heat sink for desktop setups with separate SKUs. In addition, you also get RGB support. In terms of capacity, you have three options: 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. WD gives a 1200 TBW number for endurance. You can’t find MTBF numbers on the product page, but other WD black solid state drive offerings have an MTBF of 1.75 million hours, so you can expect the same from the SN850. The SSD comes with a five-year warranty.
See also: The Best Hard Drive Choices: Top Internal and External Hard Drives to Buy
Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite: The best SSD with a good price-performance ratio
Adata is known for being great value for money and the XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite is no different. This is also a PCIe 4.0 SSD. It offers slower speeds than the top PCIe 4 SSDs with sequential read speeds up to 3,900 MB / s and sequential read speeds up to 3,200 MB / s.Make no mistake, these are still great speeds, and the XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite offers them at a significantly lower price than most other Generation 4 SSDs.
The drive also receives a heat sink bundle. You get three capacity options: 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The MTBF rating is 2 million hours and the drive has a rating of 1480 TBW. Adata offers a five year limited warranty.
Samsung 870 Evo: Best SATA SSD
While NVMe solid state drives are faster, not all systems have the M.2 PCIe slot. SATA is the only way to add internal storage for older systems, and the Samsung 870 Evo excels in this category. It reaches the maximum SATA interface limit of 560 MB / s for sequential read processes and 530 MB / s for sequential write speeds. While these speeds aren’t as high as the NVMe options, these are still the best speeds you can get with a SATA drive.
You get capacity options of 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB, with cache up to 4GB. The Samsung MKX controller is running the show here. The MTBF is 1.5 million hours, and there is also an output of 2,400 TBW. Samsung offers a five-year guarantee.
Best external SSDs
External SSDs are more useful than external hard drives for external storage purposes. First, external SSDs aren’t the same weight as external HDDs, so you can get better portability even on the cheapest ones. Second, the speeds are also significantly faster, which is an obvious benefit for storing data that may need to be moved. Here are our best external SSD tips.
Samsung T7 Touch: high-performance external SSD with biometric security
Samsung is also a leader in the external SSD space. The Samsung T7 Touch is an external SSD with USB 3.2 Gen2 support. You get an embedded PCIe NVMe drive with speeds of up to 1,050 MB / s for sequential reads and up to 1,000 MB / s for sequential writes. The biggest selling point is that the T7 Touch has biometric security with a fingerprint reader and AES-256 encryption.
It’s also a very portable external drive. Weighing in at just 58 grams, it’s about the size of a credit card and just 8 mm thick. In addition to the restrained design, that makes it a stylish choice. You get capacity options of 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Samsung grants a three-year limited warranty on this.
WD Black P50: Best external SSD for storing PC and console games
WD Black P50 is an SSD suitable for your external game drive. It’s from the gaming brand of Western Digital and carries the edgy gamer aesthetic that we love about the series. It comes with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 connector and has a sturdy housing that doesn’t compromise compactness. WD promises speeds of up to 2,000 MB / s.
WD Black lives up to WD’s reputation and you can expect the P50 to be a good external SSD. You get capacity options of 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. You get a 5 year limited warranty.
See Also: The Best Hard Drives and Solid State Drives You Can Buy for the Playstation 5
G-Technology G-Drive Mobile: External SSD solution for professionals
WD markets the G-Technology brand to professionals and content creators, and G-Drive Mobile is the perfect external SSD for this demographic. If you’re a professional content creator or YouTuber in need of powerful external storage, this is the drive for you. It has IP67 water and dust resistance, 3 meter drop protection, and a 1000 pound compressive strength.
This G-Drive Mobile product line is available in two versions: G-Drive USB-C and G-Drive Thunderbolt 3. The USB-C version supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 and reaches top speeds of 560 MB / s, while Thunderbolt 3 reaches The series promises speeds of up to 2,800 MB / s.You get capacity options of 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB. The G-Drive Mobile range is guaranteed for 5 years.
Western Digital My Passport Wireless SSD: The Best Wireless External SSD
Western Digital My Passport Wireless SSD is a niche but a very useful solution. WD designed this to be wireless and can create its own Wi-Fi access point to allow access to the data without the use of a cable or even a computer. In addition, it has an SD 3.0 card reader, with which data can be transferred back and forth at up to 65 MB / s. This makes it a great solution for photographers and videographers. The drive itself can achieve read speeds of up to 390 MB / s via USB 3.0. Another USB 2.0 can also be connected for data transfers to external card readers and USB devices.
The chassis itself is very robust and has an integrated 6,700 mAh power bank with an output power of up to 1.5 A. On the capacity side, you get 250 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB. While the My Passport Wireless SSD isn’t the fastest external SSD on the market, it is definitely worth considering as it has all of the additional features.
See Also: The Best External Hard Drives: What Options Do You Have?
Choosing the best PC hardware and peripherals
Now that you know the best hard drives, you may want to use some of the other PC components and peripherals. Here you can find more best lists and explanations about PC.