Customer Ratings & Reviews

This drive is a great addition to my HP Omen 35L gaming desktop. The Omen came with a 1TB M.2 drive and with the addition of the Optimus GX PRO, I now have 3TB worth of space. I use the Sandisk to store my games. This keeps them all together in the same place, and keeps the SSD with the operating system and normal additional programs separate. The 850X NVMe SSD is available in different capacities (1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB). You can also get it with a heatsink or without. Mine does not have the heatsink but it's located above the GPU on the motherboard and has plenty of ventilation. If you're wondering how much capacity 2TB buys you, I currently have 13 games installed on this SSD. These are all large installs with titles like the last three DOOM games, the last three Tomb Raider games, several Star Wars games and four Resident Evil games. So, with 13 games like this installed, I've only used 816GB of space. For me, this size works well and gives me plenty of room to grow my collection. It was very easy to install, nothing tricky or unique about it. It's a standard M.2 2280 size, so it should fit in a wide variety of machines. Worked flawlessly from installation. Smooth and fast when loading games and levels. I never saw any loading issues. Sandisk includes a 5-year warranty with this drive. Another nice thing is that Sandisk also offers a free desktop app for download. Sandisk Dashboard shows info about the SSD like Drive Health, Capacity, Interface Speed and Temperature. It also shows a performance section that gives you some useful tools and optimizations, and has links to Windows drive settings along with a link to register a new Sandisk product. The specs on this drive are really good. PCIe Gen 4.0 is (at the time of this review) the standard for fast gaming machines. The Gen 4.0 version ensures things like 7000-7500 Mbps sequential read speeds over 4 lanes. This is important if you're installing this drive into a newer machine with a fast processor that can fully utilize all the fast features of this drive. If you're planning to use it in an older machine, make sure you look up the machines PCIe specs. While the SSD will fit and work in a standard 2280 slot on the motherboard, if your machine only has the PCIe 3.0 spec, you'll be leaving half the features on the table (so to speak). It will run, but only at PCIe 3.0 speeds. I suspect that most reasonably modern gaming machines will include the 4.0 standard, so this is just something to keep in mind. Anyway, my experience with this SSD has been 100% positive. The price of any NVMe SSD these days is ridiculously expensive, so for Sandisk to include a 5 year warranty is at least something for your peace of mind. Combined with being able to get it with or without a heatsink and at a bunch of different capacities is something that makes this drive series appeal to a wide audience. The Sandisk Dashboard is also a cool way to monitor the health of your drive.

I’m very happy with this little SSD with 2TB of storage - more than I need at the moment, with room to grow. While it doesn’t have any fancy heat sinks or showy elements, its slim profile ended up being appreciated as it it was easily able to slot into a somewhat hard to access m2 slot in my machine that was partially obstructed by a graphics card. In terms of speed, it’s a beast. While very similar to another speedy SSD I own, it’s fantastic to gain two more terabytes space at high speeds and an advertised endurance rating of up to 4,800 TBW. Only time will tell how well it holds up, but I haven’t had an SSD fail in over a decade, so I can only assume Sandisk’s quality will last here too. Either way, the 5 year warranty is fantastic to have for the extra assurance. Setup was simple, after finding my remaining m2 slot, it popped it in within about 30 seconds. If you’re like me, my pre-built PC didn’t come with extra screws for securing these drives, so I had previously bought some extras for doing small upgrades like this. This drive will not come with any either, so it’s always a good thing to check that you have what you need before this arrives. Like I mentioned above, I had initially worried I might need to remove my graphics card to slot this into my last m2 slot (every computer varies) but I was happily surprised that since this model is so flat/slim, I still had room to install it without removing anything. Overall, this is a fantastic speedy drive with great capacity for all of my upcoming games. I love being able to have all of my content on SSDs now. My machine is has no more bottlenecks, love it!

I installed this SanDisk 2TB Optimus GX PRO 850X PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD into my gaming laptop to replace the 1TB SSD that came installed in it. Not only did it give me twice as much space so that I don’t have to worry about what I download, but I don’t have to delete anything that I’d like to keep. It’s fast too with 7300MB/s / 6600MB/s sequential read/write. This will keep you gaming or creating! This was made to handle high performance gaming and multitasking creative applications. This SanDisk 2TB Optimus GX PRO 850X PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD is ideal for gaming PC’s and laptops and creator PC’s and laptops. In the box you get the SanDisk 2TB Optimus GX PRO 850X PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 NVMe SSD. Compatibility: Windows® 10+, PCIe 4.0 x4 Interface, M.2 2280 Port Software: SanDisk has software to download on their website that you can download for free. I used the Acronis True Image for SanDisk, which is part of the SanDisk downloads, to clone my existing SSD in my laptop since it only has one slot for an SSD. Once cloned I was able to install the new SSD, and it booted right up. I then installed the SanDisk Desktop software. Through the Desktop application, you can keep your drive up to date, monitor the health of your drive, and put it into Game Mode. Warranty: The SSD comes with a 5 year limited warranty I’m really excited to have this drive in my gaming laptop. I also do some creative work on videos and photos for social media, so this is great for me!

The last time I looked at SSD prices was 12/24 when I purchased a 2TB Samsung 990 Evo plus for my desktop from BB - that same drive is now 3 times what I paid then (on BB) and 15% of cost for this new SanDisk Optimus GX Pro 850X (was previously marketed as WD Black I believe). Sticker shock is real. The SanDisk is a PCIe 4x4 NVMe 1.4 M.2 2280 SSD with 2TB capacity with following specs; TLC 3D NAND Dram Cache is DDR4 I believe SLC SanDisk nCache 4.0 Sequential Read Speed (Queue Depth=8, Threads=1) rated at 7300MBs Sequential Write Speed (Queue Depth=8, Threads=1) rated at 6600MBs Random Read 4KB Speed (Queue Depth = 32, Threads=16) rated at 1.2M IOPS (input/output operations per second) Random Write 4KB Speed (Queue Depth=32, Threads=16) rated at 1.1 IOPS. 7.5W average read power 7W average write power Sleep average 5mW Endurance (TBW) 1,200 MTTF up to 1.75M hours It doesn’t state anywhere on the packaging but there is SanDisk Dashboard (WD) and Acronis True Image software available. The Dashboard is nice to ensure firmware is up to date and check drive health. I would highly suggest purchasing an external PCIe drive enclosure – it makes it so easy to clone your existing drive to new and to use the old as external storage. I prefer using MiniTool Partition (need purchased addition) if moving from a smaller drive to a larger one as it will allow you to expand any of the existing partitions as well as a multitude of partition manipulation options. Using CrystalDiskMark; Read speeds were a tad less than my Samsung 990(see pics) Write speeds were mostly somewhat quicker than Samsung 990 (see pics) There are no lighting effects – which is fine for me. No heatsink provided. 5-year limited warranty. While it is a nice drive, I would have expected this to be PCIe 5.0 compatible – very disappointing it is only 4.0. With that in mind and also considering its comparable performance as well as price point, I think there are better 2TB options.

More storage is always a great thing, especially the 2TB GXPRO from Sandisk (WD). I have a few of Sandisk's 2.5" SATA SSDs in other devices but this is the 1st time using their NVMe drives. So have I have nothing but great things to say except for 1 thing, speed. I will talk about this later. In the box is just the drive, so having some knowledge of NVMe installation is required. It is super simple but make sure if you lack PC skills to put it in the correct M.2 slot on your motherboard. As the drive works perfectly out of the box, you can download the Sandisk Optimus app to get a better readout of your drive and to download/install future Firmware Updates. As of 5/2026, there is no update. The 2TB size is perfect for my needs as I can throw my Steam/Epic libraries on the drive and not worry for a long time about drive space. This is paired with my already installed 2TB 990 Pro and speeds and performance are respectable. Now for my speed tests with CD Mark and using CD Info for drive specs, I could not match my speeds to what Sandisk advertises. For this 2TB model, they claim up to 7300MBs read and 6600MBs write, but I fall short no matter how many times I run my tests. I am getting 6200-6300 Read and 4300-4400 Writes. I am getting my full speeds and lanes to the drive using PCIe 4.0 x 4 1.4 so I know it isn't my personal rig. So to be sure, I moved and reformatted the drive to another PC and got the same speeds. If anyone can help me to see what I am doing wrong, it would be appreciated. Another thing that to me doesn't warrant another star to be knocked off is Price to Performance as tech prices has skyrocketed in the last year. I don't blame Sandisk for this, but if you could get this on sale, I'd recommend it in a heartbeat. Not at full price.

SANDISK has been a household name for me for decades. As a photographer and videographer by trade, I prefer using their media and storage solutions both professionally and casually, in all of my cameras and devices. There are certain companies that can gain your trust by creating and offering products that perform consistently at peak levels and last a long time. SANDISK has been there for me over the years. They are a name I can trust, and their products have never let me down. While storage media hasn’t changed much physically over the years, particularly camera media, the read and write speed and internal performance is where the magic happens. As cameras and computers become faster and higher resolution, the need for faster media and more storage space is inevitable. The 2TB SANDISK Optimus GX PRO is the latest in a line of extremely small and fast M.2 NVMe SSDs. It is built for both speed and storage. Two things content creators can’t live without. The GX Pro is built for the modern day content creator who needs not only the most demanding sequential read/write speeds on the market today, but also the extra storage space. Whether you are installing this into a PC tower, a laptop, or even a gaming console, you can expect top performance and rock solid stability. In my years of experience, these two characteristics are synonymous with the SANDISK brand. Just keep in mind that you will need to determine what version you need based on your use case. For instance, if you install this into a gaming console, you will want to get the version that includes the heatsinc. As far as performance is concerned, the Optimus GX PRO is installed in my dedicated video editing computer as my direct project editing drive for DaVinci Resolve and it is performing flawlessly. I can load full 4K color-graded timelines packed with transitions and effects and still scrub back and forth quickly with no hiccups. Keep in mind that part of this has to do with your processor and GPU, but when you combine a fast and efficient SSD, like the Optimus, with a capable computer, you will be in editing heaven. As stated above, the sequential read/write speed of this drive is rated up to 7,300/6,600 MB/s (Megabytes per second), which is more than enough for today's current graphics standards. Adding those speeds to the fact that this drive is 2TB, would make the Optimus a welcome addition/upgrade to a compatible laptop as well, giving you a powerhouse mobile editing solution. I think I’ll need another one! The size of these M.2 drives and how much information can fit on them is truly astonishing. Not long ago, we needed huge slow spinning hard drives for massive amounts of storage space. Besides speed and efficiency, the storage space on such a small drive makes the Optimus even more impressive, a whole lot faster, more reliable, and more mobile. Lastly, the SANDISK software app (for Windows only) allows users to keep an eye on the performance of your SANDISK products, real time diagnostics, formatting options, as well as to upgrade firmware if needed. The app is quick and easy to use and displays all of the information needed to keep your SANDISK products running at peak performance. *** PROS *** Incredible speed and performance Extremely small and light Lots of storage space The trusted SANDISK name *** CONS *** Storage media is expensive No mounting screw included

This Sandisk Optimus GX PRO storage is the perfect solution for the PC owner who needs a fast, reliable, and easy to install storage upgrade for their gaming needs. This 2TB SSD arrived neatly packaged, and was well protected during transit. Before ordering, I made sure the device I would be upgrading used this particular type of storage drive. Once I carefully removed it from the package, I was ready to start my install. I have a ROG Xbox Ally handheld, which has a stock storage capacity of 512gb. By utilizing some online guides and resources, I was able to removed the stock storage, and install this upgrade from Sandisk, with very little trouble. After a multi-step set up process to reinstall Windows on the ROG, it appeared that the Sandisk install was a success. I then downloaded most of my Steam and Xbox game library to my ROG, and I noticed that the download speeds did seem to be faster with this storage. After spending some time playing some games, including some demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077, I can confidently say that this upgrade from Sandisk has been awesome for my needs. Load times are quick, and I absolutely love having the extra storage in my device. Before this, I was utilizing a 1TB SD card; I found that some games do not do well being loaded from an SD card, basically ensuring that you need to install these demanding titles on the internal SSD. Because of this upgrade, I've installed all of my regular go-games, and still have a huge amount of space left on the SSD. Just to note, after install, the total size of this SSD was 1.81 TB. While not the full 2 TB, there is always some variation of actual size, and this is still a MASSIVE upgrade from the stock 512gb. Overall, I am thrilled with the performance of this SSD from Sandisk, and it is pretty easy to install, which will also depend on what device you choose to use it is. Just be sure to check the specs to ensure you are ordering the right type of device. If you're looking for a high performance SSD for your gaming PC or handheld, look no further than the Sandisk Optimus GX PRO. 5 stars all the way!

The Optimus GX Pro 850X is basically a rebadged WD Black SN850X, which was one of, if not the top performing PCIe NVMe 4.0 SSD on the market a few years ago. And that's why you have only 4 stars, because while it is still super fast and relevant, it is only PCIe 4.0 and basically the same performance you likely had or wish you could go back to in 2023/2024. Sandisk was acquired by WD for nearly a decade but it looks like they spun off again sometime last year and the GX Pro is the rebadge. It is likely Sandisk technology that powered the SN850X however, as they really brought WD to the forefront with that SSD. With that out of the way, the drive performs nearly identically to the SN850X. I have a 4TB SN850X, a 4TB 990Pro, a 2TB Micro 2500/T500 and this Optimus GX Pro performs nearly identically to the 4TB SN850X. The 990Pro pulls ahead a little bit when it comes to Seq/Writes at closer to 7300/7000/MB/s but the GX Pro/850X do better on random I/O. There's a picture of the two drives in a Zephryus G16 laptop that needed more storage, but the Micron 2500/T500 has slightly better sequential Read speeds, but the GX Pro 850X outclasses it when it comes to random read/writes. Micron is on the left, Sandisk on the right. PCIe 4.0 isn't a such a huge deal especially if you're in a laptop, since PCIe 5.0 uses a lot of power and can get hot and throttle. Also if you use PCIe 5.0 SSDs in a desktop, a lot of times it will drop your GPU lanes down to PCIe 5.0 x8 so be aware of that. PCIe 4.0 is still super fast for games and content creation or AI or whatever else you are planning to do with this, but this disk is marketed for gaming. I actually needed an additional disk because I wanted to get the OS and game drive separated to see if it helped performance at all if there were read contentions, but honestly this new drive did not make a difference in the games I tried (Forza Horizon 6 and Diablo 4). Even when I loaded Ultra textures the SSD was not the limiting factor, the amount of VRAM and bandwidth was the main bottleneck. This is because DirectStorage is still not widely used on the PC, where the game assets and textures stream directly from the SSD to the GPU. So yes the GX Pro 850X is still a formidable SSD, at a heavyweight price point due to the memory crisis, which is unfortunate right now for all of us. But if you have a need then this is still a great drive and option for gaming, content creation and AI workloads.

The 2TB Optimus GX PRO 850X (without heatsink) is another quality NVMe SSD from Sandisk. I own several WD 850X-based NVMe SSDs and all of them have been stellar performers. None have let me down. They run fast, run cool and do their jobs without a hitch. I was eager to get my hands on one of these 850X 'sticks' to add to my newly acquired Lenovo Legion 7i Pro and installation was a breeze. I'm sticking with the OEM drive that came with the laptop - which is 1TB in size - as my boot-drive and will use this Optimus GX Pro as a Steam & content repository. The Optimus GX Pro is a proper configuration for laptops, with 2TB NAND chips all located on the top-side of the PCBA. This allows wider physical fitment compatibility, across many more laptops - some that don't place so nice with double-sided NVMe devices. Speeds for both sustained writes & reads exceed 6 GB/sec on my particular machine - which is great! Temperatures average in the mid-40 C to high-50C range, under heavy load. YMMV I ignore synthetic benchmark scoring for rating NVMe SSD performance but I am certain others will chime-in with those metrics - for anyone interested. The Dashboard software available from Sandisk is a great tool for maintenance & firmware update checks/loading. Summary: The Optimus GX PRO 850X is another strong performer in a long lineage of 850X products, no matter if they are of previous WD heritage or Sandisk. I see no sacrifices inherent to this new Optimus branding... Sandisk is a name I trust!

The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850X NVM2 SSD is fast. Faster than my other M.2 drives. Installation is standard, you need a 2280 size slot, slip it in and secure it to your motherboard. I used windows, it was recognized right away and formatting it for use was easy. 2TB is large enough to hold an OS and games or large media files with ease. I used my Asus gaming laptop and ran the 3D Mark SSD benchmark against 3 drives. The picture attached shows the results. Overall the Sandisk did better than a Samsung 980 Pro and a WD PC SN740. For gaming it came out on top for access and bandwidth speed. This is just one test, but in the same M.2 slot, the Sandisk was consistent. No issues with overheating in the laptop either. It also comes with a 5 year warranty. The drive boasts a 7,300MB/s Sequential Read Performance per Sandisk. The size and speed of the stick is impressive and great for gaming. This is my first Sandisk M.2, and it so far it’s great and at least on par with any other similar drives out there.

The Optimus GX PRO 850X is an excellent PCIe 4.0 drive. From what I can tell from the specifications it's either a new or relabeled version of the WD SN850X, which I've owned for several years now and have been quite happy with and so far my experience using the GX PRO 850X it’s mirrored my experience of writing and loading games to the SN850X. The read and write speeds are near the top end of what's possible with PCIe 4.0 drives and for gaming it doesn’t really get much better. PCIe 5.0 drives exist, but the extra speed they offer is not something that really makes a difference in gaming. My motherboard has one built-in for its SSD slots, but there is also an optional heat sink available for this drive. The elephant in the room is of course the price. Right now, this is going for around $660, which is probably 4x more than it should cost. I don't know if storage and RAM pricing is ever going to get back down to where it used to be, but if pricing does start to become reasonable again this is a good buy.

An SSD stick may not be as sexy as a huge monitor or sick mechanical keyboard, but when it comes to playability that’s where performance actually comes from. Besides RAM, a great performing stick is crucial to having a good gaming experience. But the San Disk Optimus GX Pro isn’t just for gamers – anyone who wants a great performing SSD from a name you can trust will find this to be a great value. I’ve been using SanDisk products since the late 1990’s starting with memory cards and USB flash drives to RAM and internal storage and I still have some SanDisk products from back then that are STILL working. So, I feel confident in recommending the brand. And the drive itself is a solid performer; it came extremely close to it’s stated read and write specs in my benchmark tests, so there’s no complaints there. This stick is fast; I’ve been testing it with the latest version of Ubuntu and opening apps and games are near instantaneous with short load times. Unfortunately, this powerhouse of a drive comes at a premium price and even though BB has this at the lowest price among competitors, at this price you are starting to close on PCIe 5.0 drives, which would nearly double your read/write speeds. It is an incredible drive that I am fortunate to be testing, don’t get me wrong. But if I am being honest, you can find some great mid-tier drives at a price the average or casual gamer could better afford. You’re really up against the limits of 4.0 technology here – the Optimus is close to pushing the threshold here so if you could move to a 5.0 drive setup, it might be wiser to spend your money there. But if you want one of the absolute best 4.0 SSDs for gaming/content creation or any other high burst application like AI work, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better alternative – if you can afford it. I would recommend SanDisk in general and this SSD specifically with that caveat.

I used the SANDISK 2TB Optimus GX PRO 850X NVMe SSD to add more storage to my base M4 Mac Mini through a Thunderbolt dock. When I originally got the Mini, I stuck with the base storage because the upgrade costs felt pretty steep. Looking back, with storage prices the way they are now, I probably should have just gone bigger from the start. Setup was simple. I installed it in the enclosure, plugged it into the dock, chose the format, and was ready to go. Physically, it looks like most other M.2 SSDs, but installation was easy and the quality seemed fine. Performance has been the biggest win. On my current base M4 Mini, I’m seeing around 2700–3100 MB/s, which is right in line with my internal drive. For video editing, that means I can work from the external SSD without feeling slowed down. If you’re wanting a similar setup and using a Mac Mini dock, make sure it is actually Thunderbolt. A lot of docks look similar, but if it is not Thunderbolt, you may be stuck closer to 1000 MB/s speeds. The funny part is I’m really only using part of what this drive can do right now. My current Mac and doc are the limiting factor. When I eventually move up to a Pro or Max chip Mac with a faster Thunderbolt 5 setup, I should be able to get a lot more speed out of this SSD. Overall, this has been a great storage upgrade. It is fast, easy to set up, and already feels like extra internal storage instead of a slower external drive.

Upgrading your hard drive can be one of the most efficient speed upgrades you can perform to increase speed of your PC and increasing HD capacity. Only downside is the price, especially considering today's economy. There was a time when 1TB was large enough for any PC/Laptop but with games/applications these days getting ridiculously massive, hard drive space is now a premium. Going with a 2TB is usually the best recommendation these days. Biggest thing when upgrading your hard drive is the speed and also, what type of drive it is. NVME are the rage while the older spindle or spinning HDs have, mostly, gone by the way side. In my system, I have 5 NVME drives and I can tell you, speed is not an issue with my system. Most of the read/write speeds on my NVMEs are pretty decent but I have a couple in the 6,000mb/s range. This drive puts out an impressive 7,300mb/s read/write speed which will certainly upgrade your PC. This particular model comes in 4TB and 8Tb models however, if you want one of those, you'll need to really examine your needs and your annual income to make sure you can afford them. Only "caveat" to this is that there is an attachedf heatsink on the hard drive. Depending on your motherboard layout, NVMEs with heatsinks can cause some fitment issues so be aware of that.

I've been building and upgrading PCs for a while now, and I'll be the first to admit I don't always jump on the latest hardware right away. I tend to wait until something is clearly worth it. The SanDisk 2TB Optimus GX7100 NVMe SSD was clearly worth it. I picked this up mainly to replace an older SATA SSD that had been slowing things down more than I wanted to admit. I also had a growing library of games that needed a home, and I figured if I was going to upgrade, I might as well do it right. PCIe 4.0 speeds sounded great on paper. In practice, they're even better. Installation was genuinely easy. If you've never swapped out an M.2 drive before, this is a good one to start with. It seated without fuss, my system recognized it immediately, and I was up and running faster than I expected. No drama, no troubleshooting, no forum rabbit holes. That alone puts it ahead of some other upgrades I've done. The performance difference was immediately obvious. Boot times are noticeably faster, but the real win for me has been gaming. Games that used to have long load screens between areas or missions now load in what feels like seconds. Open world games in particular feel smoother in how they stream in assets. It's one of those upgrades where you wonder how you lived without it, which is either a great sign or a sign that I waited too long. Probably both. Day to day, the drive just disappears into the background the way good hardware should. File transfers are fast, large installs move quickly, and I haven't had any heat or stability issues to speak of. The 2TB capacity is a practical choice if you play modern games, which are getting larger every year. I didn't want to be in a position of managing storage again six months from now, and this gives me plenty of room to grow. If I'm being honest about the limitations, the price point is on the higher end compared to some competitors. But in my experience you get what you pay for with storage, and the combination of speed, reliability, and capacity here feels well matched. There's also not a ton of included software or extras in the box, but that's fine. I just wanted the drive to work well, and it does. This is a straightforward recommendation for anyone looking to give their PC a meaningful performance boost, especially if you're still on a SATA drive or an older NVMe. Gamers in particular will feel the difference right away. If you have a PCIe 4.0 slot available, this drive is a smart way to use it.

When it comes to hard drives/SSD's there is not really a whole lot to go over. But overall, this SSD from SanDisk has actually exceeded my expectations. I'll start with the simple stuff. Packaging is basic but good overall. Clean looking and the SSD was secure inside. Second thing that might be of some useful info to some people is (at least with the 2tb model) this SSD is "single sided" which means all the chips and hardware are on one side of the PCB. This is great because the laptop I use needs a single sided SSD and this fit the bill perfectly. Install was easy as expected (nvme SSD's are simple to install all around) and everything fit nice and cleanly in the space it needed to fit into. The only other real thing that can be said up to this point is the performance of this nvme SSD is actually somewhat better than I expected. Typically, companies like to talk about peak performance, and you may never actually see that in real use. But overall, I've been impressed with this nvme. It's strange to say a few of the games I'm now using this disk for actually preform a little better (they tend to be storage read and write dependent games). I was pleasantly surprised when scenes that used to take a while to load loaded much quicker and overall, the performance even after some heavy gaming sessions has been about the same. Overall good pick for an nvme if you're looking for something that has decent performance.

Overall, I really like this new Optimus GX Pro drive from Sandisk - it's fast and durable and it seems like it will be highly reliable. And it should be all those things, coming from a company in Sandisk that is well-known for it's top notch flash storage products. The drive is a standard 2280 NVMe with an integrated heatsink - the heatsink keeps the drive running cooler which is great for longevity and sustained speed, though it DOES mean that this particular version of the drive isn't well-suited for laptops (that won't have space for the heatsink) but is instead mean for desktop PCs and PERHAPS (though I didn't test this) certain gaming consoles. Installation is easy, much the same as any other NVMe SSD, though if your motherboard has a heatshield for the NVMe slots, you won't be able to use the shield with this particular drive. After the physical install, the setup and formatting went perfectly and I could immediately start using the additional space on the new drive from Windows (I'm using this as additional storage vs using it to replace my primary system drive). The drive performed well at the PCIe 4.0 specs just like it claims and with the warranty, I feel safe in knowing that I'll have storage for many years to come (and the drive is TLC, not QLC, which helps with endurance and overall how long the drive will last). So if you're in the market for a solid NVMe drive, this could be a good one to check out. It's challenging to recommend anything at this time given all the price increases lately, but this drive is a solid option if you need one. Give it a try today!

I have been building or upgrading PCs for many years and have lived through 5400 rpm disc drives to the current edition of NVMe drives. The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro is other worldly. I was using a 1TB NVMe that gave pretty good performance compared to the SSDs I was previously using. Now fast forward to getting a 2TB Sandisk Optimus GX Pro and watching the performance is unlike anything I have seen. I am running a rig that I built with the following specs: ASRock B550 PG Velocita with an AMD Ryzen 9 processor, 64GB of DDR4 memory and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 Graphics card with 12 GB of DDR6 memory. With this setup running my previous NVMe drives I would get between 1500 and 2000MB of read speed. The latest test was done right before I swapped drives. The new drive blew the old one away. I always hear about read/write times but never thought they made that big of a difference. I was so wrong! There was a significant jump and even before I started a game could tell the difference. The read speed went from 1,600MB to 6,200MB per second. Load times are incredible fast and in-game performance is almost flawless. What's crazy is it has the potential to go up to 7300MB read speeds. Make sure your CPU and your M.2 sockets support PCIe Gen4x4 otherwise you may not be able to take advantage of everything this drive offers. I found that out the hard way! Overall I am thoroughly pleased with this drive.

In our current timeline, memory pricing is abysmal. There's unfortunately no way to get around it, especially when you are looking for high performance SSDs or RAM. Let's just get it out of the way up front. $850 for 2TB of any speed is insane. Even at it's current (at time of writing) price of $669 is still too much. But that's where we're at right now. Putting the price aside, this is an excellent NVME SSD for gamers or anyone who needs exceptionally fast read/write speeds from storage. I needed a gaming SSD for my new PC build which is a Bazzite (Linux) home theater tv build. Now because it's a Linux build and this SSD has Windows specific features meant to increase speeds when inside a Windows machine, I wasn't able to hit the quoted speeds unfortunately. Keep this in mind if you are thinking about going the Linux route with this SSD. However, I got very close to the quoted speeds! See below. Quoted Read/Write Speeds: 7300 MB/s Personal Read/Write Speeds: 5700 MB/s Read, 5500 MB/s Write My last con comes back to price again. For this price, Sandisk should at least throw in a heatsink. Other than that, I'm greatly impressed by the speeds I can get and remain amazed how easy it is to install M2 drives. Even when going the Linux route, I've had no compatibility issues. This is a great option, however the price needs to come down substantially, especially when viewing other SSDs that claim similar speeds. I'm impressed, but I could be even more impressed if the price came down. Pros: Incredible speeds Plug and play Cons: Already on sale, but even the sale price is insane For this price it should have a heatsink included

The SanDisk Optimus GX Pro 850X 2TB SSDs is one of the best top-tier NVMe 4th gen drives you can buy right now. With Western Digital name going away from the SSD game SanDisk has taken up the mantle with the Optimus GX line taking the Black's place. I suspect the GX is mainly a a rebrand of the Black SN850X. This is not complaining. I'm glad that the WD SSDs can live on in a brand I already trust. The additional 2TB of storage give me plenty of space for me to offload videos, photos, and work files from my cell phone. The PCIe 4.0 connection ensures fast speeds up to 7.3GB/sec(read) and 6GB/sec(write) mean big files copy quickly, and it handles quickly storing and retrieving files or fast load times for games (if I choose to store games on this drive) without much slow down. The caveat to that is that is does not come with a heatsink so it can take a bit longer to shed the heat generated from prolonged heavy usage which can cause slow downs. This is true of any SSD but heat can become an issue for high performing drives are combined with poor ventilation. PCIe 5.0 drives exist(Optimus GX Pro 8100), but those will run even hotter. For my use case in a thin laptop mainly used for storage, the 850X is still a top tier PCIe 4.0 drive and the cooler running temps mean not having a heatsink is of no concern. If I choose to move it to a gaming computer, I would consider throwing on a heatsink. The biggest con for the drive is cost. Due to current state of chips it's unavoidable at the moment but at current prices it is definitely something you want to consider you absolutely need vs something that you want for the additional space. If you are looking for top performance for heavy work or gaming and money isn’t an issue, this is one of the best drives on the consumer market. For most normal users, a cheaper (slower) drive is probably enough until chip prices stabilize.