Installing a new solid-state drive (SSD) for the first time or replacing an older one, is the single most effective upgrade you can make to a PC. An SSD upgrade won't cost you too much, doesn't take long to install, and significantly improves your computing experience. It's a tried-and-tested method to breathe new life into a computer.
Picking the right SSD, however, can be a little complicated. M.2 drives are widely available, with capacities ranging from 250GB to 8TB. Additionally, M.2 is the form factor for NVMe, the high-speed connection that has almost entirely replaced SATA, which is present on some M.2 drives and 2.5-inch SSDs. Although SATA drives generally provide the best value for capacity, you should only buy NVMe M.2 drives since they're the best for hosting operating systems and generally have much better performance; plus, SATA SSDs in the M.2 form factor are getting hard to find.
These are the best M.2 SSDs in 2023
WD Black SN850X PCIe 4.0 SSD
Top-end performance without a large price tag
The WD Black SN850X is a slightly upgraded version of the regular SN850. It's one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market, and can be used in a gaming PC or a PS5.
- One of the best performing NVMe SSDs
- Comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes
- Relatively inexpensive
- Extra performance isn't necessary for all users
The Western Digital Black SN850X is my pick for the best SSD you can buy right now. It's basically a slightly improved SN850 with a PCIe 4.0 interface to take advantage of double the theoretical bandwidth limit of other PCIe 3.0 drives. The SN850 can hit 7,300MB/s reads and 6,300MB/s writes in sequential transfers to stand out from the crowd. The drive comes in an M.2 2280 single-side form factor with an NVMe controller, a DRAM chip, and two flash packages.
The SN850X drive is available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities with or without heatsinks. High-performance drives are known to run a little hot, especially when under load, so I recommend using a heatsink to keep your drive temperature in check, whether it's from WD or included on your motherboard.
The drive is also rated to endure up to 300TBW (terabytes written) for the 500GB capacity, or up to 1,200TBW on the 2TB variant. The company also backs the Black SN850X with a five-year warranty. These warranty claims are more in line with what most manufacturers offer for their SSDs, so that's great.
PCIe 4.0 is all about speeds and the Western Digital Black SN850 is great in that regard. This is arguably the best M.2 SSD to buy right now, even after PCIe 5.0 drives have come out (and very few have actually launched at the time of writing). They're simply too expensive to make sense for anyone but the most demanding users running heavy workloads, and they also require compatible PCIe 5.0 hardware.
Samsung 990 Pro SSD 1TB
Samsung's alternative to the SN850X
Samsung's 990 Pro is truly pushing the limits of what PCIe 4.0 storage can offer. It offers the fastest transfer speeds we've seen so far for a Gen 4 drive while not costing much more than slower SSDs.
- Top-end performance
- 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB sizes
- Heatsink variants
- Firmware needs to be updated as soon as it's installed
Samsung's 990 Pro is the company's latest high-end NVMe SSD, replacing the older 980 Pro. With sequential reads up to 7,450MB/s and writes up to 6,900MB/s, it's the fastest SSD in this entire collection, and it's usually more expensive than the SN850X. However, it's going on sale for less than $100 just like the SN850X.
Technologically, the 990 Pro is similar to the 980 Pro but features several improvements. Most importantly, it's 50% more efficient than the 980 Pro, which is extremely important for laptops since less power consumption means more battery life. The 990 Pro is also optimized for Microsoft's DirectStorage API, which aims to lower the loading times in games.
The 990 Pro only comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, but each capacity has a variant with or without a heatsink. The models with the heatsink cost $20 more than those without, but you probably won't need it if the device you're installing this SSD into already has a heatsink for SSDs. Thanks to its five-year warranty and endurance of 600TBW per TB of capacity (which means a maximum of 2,400TBW for the 4TB model), this SSD will last for a very long time and if it doesn't, you'll be able to ask Samsung for a replacement.
This is the fastest SSD you can find, but it doesn't get the ultimate recommendation from us for two reasons. Firstly, it's certain the 990 Pro will go back up in price at some point as Samsung winds down production so supply goes down. Secondly, early firmware on the 990 Pro causes major health degradation issues, which means you need to update the 990 Pro as soon as you install it. I'm sure Samsung has fixed the 990 Pro, but the whole firmware thing still has me spooked.
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus
A well performing SSD with a ton of capacity
The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is a midrange PCIe 4.0 SSD with a balance of value and speed. Additionally, it offers up to 8TB of capacity, one of the few M.2 drives to do so.
- 8TB when most drives go up to 4TB
- Good performance
- Separate heatsink for PS5
- Pretty expensive
The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus M.2 SSD is nearly as good as the leader of the pack. It's just a touch slower than the WD Black SN850X with peak reads of 7,100MB/s and writes of 6,600MB/s, but it has one thing the SN850X can't match: capacity. Sabrent offers an 8TB model of the Rocket 4 Plus, making it one of the densest SSDs you can find right now.
The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus uses the new Phison E18 controller. It’s a follow-up to the popular Phison E16 controller that runs the show on first-gen PCIe 4.0 drives. It’s available in 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB capacities, with a five-year warranty that’s good for 700TBW, 1,400TBW, 3,000TBW, and 5,600TBW endurance, respectively. Both the capacity and the warranty options are more in line with what most other M.2 SSDs out there offer on the market. The drive also has Micron NAND flash and SK Hynix RAM for the cache.
Sabrent will also give you a copy of Acronis True Image to help transfer your current installation across. The drive also comes with a custom heatsink so that it can perform well, and there's also a separate thinner heatsink for those who want to install it inside a PS5.
We're mainly recommending the 8TB model here, but that'll cost about $1,000. That's not a great value but having so much density is a selling point on its own. The smaller capacity models are also good, just not amazing.
Solidigm P41 Plus
PCIe 4.0 performance for less
Solidigm's P41 Plus is a budget PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD that targets good bang for buck in respect to performance and capacity.
- Good enough performance for most users
- Custom-made drivers and software
- 1TB model for around $50, 2TB for less than $100
- One of the slowest PCIe 4.0 drives
Although Intel no longer makes its own SSDs, the team behind Intel drives like the 670p is still around today, operating under the name Solidigm. It's only just started to launch its own SSDs, but already its P41 Plus drive is a value champion. It offers PCIe 4.0 speeds (albeit, the bare minimum for a PCIe 4.0 drive) for some of the lowest prices out there: roughly $50 and $100 for the 1TB and 2TB models respectively.
The biggest weakness of the P41 Plus is the performance. In our review, it only got up to 4,000MB/s in reads and 3,300MB/s in writes, just under the official rating of 4,125MB/s in reads and 3,325MB/s in writes. Great pricing helps make up for this, but so does Solidigm's custom Synergy software and drivers. Virtually every other company actually just uses Microsoft's default SSD drivers, but Solidigm's custom drivers boost performance by a decent amount, despite it being super low-end. Additionally, its 400TBW endurance isn't bad either.
There are lots of faster drives out there, for not too much more: the SN850X is just about $30 more, the 990 Pro is $40 to $50 more, and so on. However, if you're buying storage in bulk, the price difference will add up very quickly. It's also worth considering that drives with better specs on paper might not be noticeably better for most users in practice. Most of us aren't copying and pasting massive files all the time, so choosing a P41 Plus might not be much of a downgrade.
Patriot Viper Venom VPR400
It's not fast but it sure is pretty to look at
Patriot's Viper Venom VPR400 is one of the few M.2 SSDs that holds the distinction of having RGB lighting. Its performance is fairly unremarkable, but with RGB and a relatively low price, it manages to stand out.
- RGB lighting!
- Lower price than higher-end SSDs
- Very slow for a PCIe 4.0 SSD
- Only two size options available
Considering that M.2 SSDs are often stowed away, lying either under components or on the other side of the board, you don't necessarily need to care about how they look. Nevertheless, RGB can be put on basically anything, and naturally, there are RGB SSDs you can buy, even in the M.2 form factor. There aren't a ton of them out there, but thankfully Patriot's Viper VPR400 comes with RGB and doesn't make any critical compromises that would normally plague such a niche product.
Only 500GB and 1TB models are available, and I definitely recommend the 1TB model here. Its maximum sequential read and write performance is 4,600MB/s and 4,400MB/s, respectively, though Patriot also says the RGB lighting reduces performance by 10%. That would mean with RGB on, you're looking at just 4,100MB/s and 4,000MB/s reads and writes. At least its rated endurance of 800TBW is good, and that's backed up by a five-year limited warranty.
When it comes to performance, the VPR400 is totally outclassed by every other PCIe 4.0 drive and is only moderately faster than top-end PCIe 3.0 SSDs. However, it's unlikely that most people would notice or care about that reduced performance, and you're not even paying a ridiculous price for the VPR400. At the time of writing, it costs about $80. If you really want RGB on your M.2 SSD, the Viper VPR400 is a good option and comes with surprisingly little baggage.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD
Still a fast SSD despite its age
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus is still a fantastic PCIe 3.0 SSD for those who're not chasing the cutting-edge SSD technology. Its sequential reads and writes are subpar compared to PCIe 4.0 drives but its random performance is equal to even the 990 Pro.
- Very low price
- Good random performance
- Worse sequential performance than even slow PCIe 4.0 drives
While the last-gen PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSDs are no match against the newer PCIe 4.0 drives, they're still worth picking up if you're not too worried about top-tier performance. There's no shortage of PCIe 3.0-based SSDs, but the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is my top pick. The 970 EVO Plus replaced the highly popular 970 EVO drive as the mainstream PCIe 3.0 SSD before the new-gen drives arrived. It's equipped with a V5 flash that provides a nice speed bump to 3,500MB/s of sequential reads.
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus is available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities with an endurance rating of 150 TBW, 300 TBW, 600 TBW, and 1,200 TBW, respectively. In our testing, the 970 EVO Plus is capable of sequential read and write speeds of around 3,400MB/s and 3,150MB/s; random read and write performance meanwhile is actually on par with the 990 Pro, the company's latest SSD. Thanks to the TurboWrite cache, the 970 EVO Plus SSD has varied sequential write speeds, based on how much data lands in the hands of the cache memory.
The Samsung 970 EVO Plus is still considered to be one of the best to handle tough workloads, which is why it's one of the best PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSD on the market right now. As a previous-generation product, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is also not as expensive as it once used to be. It's still a really great drive to use in something like a budget desktop build or as an upgrade to your laptop.
Silicon Power P34A60
When you want to play as little as possible
Silicon Power's P34A60 is a low-end PCIe 3.0 SSD rated for 2,200MB/s reads and 1,600MB/s writes.
- One of the cheapest SSDs out there
- Will do fine for light tasks
- Extremely low sustained reads and writes
Is $50 not cheap enough for a 1TB SSD? How about less than $40? If that's cheap enough, then Silicon Power's P34A60 SSD is for you. At the time of writing, the 1TB model is on sale for $38 and the 2TB model is going for $66, which is as cheap as it gets. The P34A60 is a great option if you're on a budget or just want to save as much money as possible if you're buying lots of storage, but there's a reason why this drive is so cheap.
The good thing about this drive is that it has a super low cost per GB, and its endurance is pretty high at 600TBW for the 1TB model and 1,200 for the 2TB model. The P34A60 has to cut corners somewhere though, and it's on performance. This is a PCIe 3.0 drive, and even among PCIe 3.0 SSDs, this one is slow, rated for a mere 2,200MB/s in reads and 1,600MB/s in writes. If you're not moving big files around too frequently and limit yourself to pretty casual stuff and gaming, you probably won't notice the lower performance on this drive. The P34A60 is definitely not for power users, though.
Considering how cheap all SSDs are today, it might seem ludicrous to choose the P34A60 when you could get about double the speed by spending $10 more, which isn't that much in the grand scheme of things. Well, if you don't really care about speed, then you stand to gain lots of money by opting for the P34A60. I would personally go with Solidigm's P41 Plus or Crucial's P3 Plus or even Samsung's 970 EVO Plus, but the P34A60 is by no means unusable.
SABRENT Rocket 2230 NVMe 4.0 1TB SSD
A tiny drive with lots of performance
if you want to expand storage and don't want to deal with slow read/write speeds, check out the Sabrent Rocket 2230 NVMe SSD. It offers up to 4,750MB/s read and 4,300 MB/s write speeds and unmatched reliability that you won't get with a microSD card.
- Fits in devices like the Steam Deck
- Good performance
- Low power consumption
- Very expensive per gigabyte and relative to performance
There's newfound demand for small, power-efficient SSDs as handheld gaming PCs like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally have burst onto the scene. 2230-sized SSDs are pretty rare, but Sabrent's Rocket 2230 drive is tailor-made for the Deck and Ally, and should work on other devices. It's a great SSD that unfortunately comes at a significant premium.
With reads and writes of 4,750MB/s and 4,300MB/s respectively, the Rocket isn't super fast for a PCIe 4.0 SSD, but that's not terrible since you'll almost certainly want to install this in a lower-performance device like the Deck or a small laptop. It also comes in 1TB and 2TB models, which are the ones you're probably going to want to buy for a handheld gaming PC. Unfortunately, these drives command a hefty premium, with the 1TB model going for $100 or so and the 2TB going for over $200. That's about double the price per GB, and even worse of a deal when you factor in performance.
However, the Rocket 2230 is almost unchallenged in this arena, and even its few rivals aren't much cheaper. Corsair's MP600 1TB is about $10 cheaper but performance data is scarce at the time of writing, and there's not even a 2TB version. The TN436 from Inland is $105 and has substantially worse performance than the Rocket and MP600, and also lacks a 2TB model, making it irrelevant. That being said, it's good that users at least have the option to buy a high-performance 2230 SSD, which practically didn't exist before the Steam Deck launched.
Best M.2 SSDs in 2023: Final thoughts
The Western Digital Black SN850X is my top pick since it's the best overall PCIe 4.0 SSD around, succeeding the SN850 as my previous favorite. It's the M.2 SSD that should go into your next high-end PC since it's not only relatively inexpensive but boasts some of the best performance of any drive. Samsung's 990 Pro isn't a bad alternative, however.
WD Black SN850X PCIe 4.0 SSD
The WD Black SN850X is a slightly upgraded version of the regular SN850. It's one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market, and can be used in a gaming PC or a PS5.
If you're leaning towards a budget build, you might want to consider buying the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. As a last-gen product, it's not as expensive as the top contenders in this collection and is also compatible with a variety of platforms. It'll either serve as the perfect boot drive option on a budget build or can be used to store the less-frequently files in your system.
Building a new PC doesn't have to be a daunting task. You can make it easier by tackling one component at a time. Just make sure you're not spending all the time only on the core components like the CPU, GPU, and motherboard. Even the peripherals like keyboards, monitors, webcams, etc. play a vital role in making your computing experience better.