When the PlayStation 5 first came out, it was a pretty big leap from the PS4, but, the original storage size was around 825GB, although it felt a lot smaller than that in practice. Because the operating system took out a good chunk out of the storage, it brought it down to 667GB. Combine that with modern games often being between 50-100GB, and the reality is that you’re going to quickly run into the limit of what it can store. That’s where expanding the internal storage with an SSD makes sense, and even if you aren’t that tech-savvy, it’s not too difficult. The only thing that’s important to know is that you need to have SSDs with the latest PCIe Gen 4×4 tech since that is what the PS5 uses to work games at the speeds it can. Luckily, we’ve done a lot of the footwork and collected some of our favorite deals for you below, including some of the best SSDs for the PS5.
That said, if you haven’t picked up a PS5 yet, be sure to check out these excellent PS5 deals, and if you already own one, maybe check out these PS5 game deals to expand your library.
It wasn’t that long ago that you’d have to pay well over $100 to get an SSD for your PS5, and often, it’d be slower than the pricier alternatives. These days, you can buy a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB SSD with heatsink for $187 from Amazon, thereby saving $43 off the regular price of $230. The SSD offers speedy performance while also having its own nickel-coated high-end controller to help deliver effective thermal control. It means it won’t overheat and performance won’t be compromised. Being a PCIe Gen 4 SSD, you get twice the data transfer speed of PCIe Gen 3 which is useful. Offering maximum read speeds of 7,000 megabytes per second, it’s a good upgrade to go alongside your existing hard drive with 1TB offering plenty of extra space at a shrewd price.
There are a lot of different PS5 SSDs that you can use to upgrade your console’s storage space. When upgrading your PlayStation 5, look for a heatsink that has already been installed on the SSD for added ease, and check whether the SSD is compatible. Many are, and we’ve featured a bunch of them below. Different sizes are available with 1TB to 4TB most common. Not everyone needs 4TB, even though it’s tempting, so we’ve listed smaller ones, too, depending on your plans. Different brands are also available so we’ve focused on the most popular options.
Unlike your average laptop or computer, the PS5 can’t really accept any sort of SSD you want to put into it. While it’s true that, at the very least, you need to use an M.2 SSD, what’s even more important is that the SSD has a PCIe 4.0 specification, which is much faster than the older PCIe 3.0. While you could, in theory, put an older SSD into the PS5, it won’t be used to run games actively but will instead act as a storage to load games onto the internal storage, so it’s not much of an upgrade.
Also, Sony recommends that any SSD that goes into a PS5 come with a heatshield to help with heat dissipation. Without one, the SSD’s internal controller might thermal throttle it so that it doesn’t melt itself, which can impact the game’s performance and introduce lag and other issues. That’s why all the suggestions above come with some form of heatshield already pre-installed on the SSD.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.
Imagine tapping a Zelda icon on your iPhone and jumping straight into Hyrule. A new open-source project called nxnative makes that possible by repackaging Switch games you’ve bought into apps for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, with no emulator in the middle.
Why does this run so well on Apple devices?
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.