Samsung - 990 EVO PLUS SSD 2TB, PCIe Gen 4x4 | 5x2 M.2 2280, Speeds Up to 7,250 MB/s

Sure, the price may be a little higher than people wanted, but prices go up and down, sales happen, the important part to me, is that the 990 Evo Plus works like I want it to and fits in a PS5 slot just fine. I originally thought this would be great to add to my PC storage, which it would, but then I realized just how full my PS5 was becoming and since it has a M.2 slot and the 990 fits the required specs, I decided to upgrade that storage first. Since you can’t update storage firmware on the ps5, I would have to put the SSD into my PC first to update it, HOWEVER, at this current time (dec 2024) there is no firmware update for the 990 evo plus according to Samsung support when I reached out to them. So luckily I could skip that step and went straight to installing into my ps5. Installation was a breeze. Thankfully sony made the expanded storage easy to access in the ps5 and samsung followed all the standards for the M.2 design. No goofy adapters or anything like that. Just slide the storage in, screw it down, and you’re good to go. If you are installing on a PC or laptop, obviously your experience may be different depending on how easy it is to get to the M.2 slot. But there’s nothing wrong with the SSD. The ps5 has holes for different sized drives so I just lined up the holes and screwed it in place. Once installed, I didn’t need any updates, but samsung does include instructions on how to use their management software, which IS actually really easy to use and not too bloaty or full of extras. It’s a basic app to check the health and updates and speeds etc of the drive. This obviously only works on the computer install, not a playstaion but it’s very easy to use. If they do come out with a FW update, I will just pop the drive into my pc, use the provided application and apply the update. I really enjoy how Samsung makes simple, well working storage with no extra junk. These components will last a long time and the storage is actually a full 2TB, not just close. (this may vary I suppose based on what you install on, but the buffer size added to cover the required files is nice. See photo for details) After getting all set up on the ps5 and transferring over my games, I gave it a quick test on God of War Ragnarök and did not notice any slower (or faster to be fair) load times or any issues with playback of the game. The unit never overheated or warned me of anything wrong with the storage after many hours of nonstop gameplay. The drive seems to be functioning fantastic and works great in the ps5. I had seen mixed opinions on if you should use this drive in the ps5, but I have no issues with it. I think the argument may be that there are better uses for the drive, or better drives to use in a ps5, maybe cheaper, but if you’re a fan of samsung drives and that’s what you want, then I don’t see an issue with this one. As far as specs, it qualifies or passes all needs to work in the ps5. You can also see in the photos the read speeds I got from the automatic test that ran after install. OVERALL I’m really happy with this drive and feel like it will work great for my needs in the PS5 as well as in a laptop or PC if I ever move it or if that’s what you need it for, you won’t have issues. It is built well, with no extras, there is no heatsink but I had no issues with overheating. I always trust Samsung to make solid, no pun intended, SSD’s and storage and this is no different. I know there was some disappointment with the 990 EVO but the 990 EVO PLUS makes up for all those disappointments. It does what you hoped the 990 would do, sure you have to pay a bit more, but if you’re ok with that, or find a good sale, jump on it, you won’t be disappointed.

One of the best, and easiest, upgrades you can do to any PC or laptop is adding or swapping out the hard drive(s) and/or SSD(s) with whatever the latest technology is. And that’s why the latest Samsung 2TB EVO Plus SSD was immediately on my radar while starting to upgrade my most recent PC gaming rig. Specifically, in my case, I was looking to just add an additional SSD to my rig and double my storage and not use it to run my OS and other applications. After using my external SSD drive enclosure and Samsung’s Magician hardware, I was quickly able to initiate the drive and get it ready for installation. If you are looking to replace a drive, perhaps one with your OS on it, the free Magician software makes it very easy to clone that drive prior to installation. After installing the new EVO Plus in my PC using the pre-existing SSD slot, I was ready to get started by loading a few PC games onto the drive and give it a whirl with some benchmark testing. I ran a few performance benchmarks on the drive and, long story short, it performed as expected and landed mostly in the middle of the pack alongside other SSDs at this price point. However, some comparisons had the new EVO Plus measuring below but very close to the Pro or EVO non-Plus versions including the quick system benchmarks. Overall, it’s honestly not something anyone would be able to notice if running load times side by side but it was worth noting. It is a hybrid drive meaning it can be used as a PCIe Gen 4.0 x 4 or swap it to a Gen 5.0 x 2 getting more bandwidth on a Gen 5 slot but leaving more lanes open speeding up your PC. It does claim read speeds of up to 7,250 MB/s however I was never able to get it up to that speed but pretty close which is typical for any drive with normal benchmark testing. And, the bottom line is you’ll probably never even have the ability or need for such speeds years from now until the rest of technology can catch up. Some of the main reasons for selecting the new EVO Plus SSD versus other options was simply preference. I have had several Samsung SSDs in the past that I have used in my PCs, laptops and gaming consoles and have never had any issues with them like crashing, corrupted files or read/write lag. Perhaps one of the main reasons to consider the EVO Plus is because of the price point and ability to squeeze out more bang (or storage) for your buck as it is a little more moderately priced compared to PRO SSD versions. Overall I believe the new Samsung EVO Plus SSD is a great options for anyone in the market for a quick and easy upgrade that will perform well under most circumstances including gaming, content creating, designing, etc.

I think most people are always in need of more storage and I am not a fan of paying monthly for cloud storage. For me there are about 4 brands I trust to last. Samsung is usually at the top of my list. And right now with holiday prices. It was a great time to get some additional storage and Samsung won for price and speed. Just starting to setup the new 990 Evo Plus SSD. Went into "Disk Management" created a simple drive and Windows assigned a letter to the drive location. While it will likely eventually live in my year old Asus laptop. I decided for the immediate future to install it in an NVMe enclosure I had for the holiday season to bring along some media files instead of a slower older portable hard drive. The price of the 990 Evo Plus is pretty competitive to purpose built solid state portable drives. It might be tough to let my Asus have it if I find that I like it more as a portable drive. The speeds so far on USB-C to NVMe are nearly 700mb/s. Took less than 20 seconds to transfer 26GB of files. Far quicker than I usually remember seeing for old platter hard drives to move that much data. They would need minutes. Granted USB-A vs USB-C on a thunderbolt port might make up for some of the speed difference. Bonus is how small and light this SSD is with my enclosure, easier for travel. For such a tiny stick of gum sized storage. The 990 Evo Plus is amazingly fast. It might be debatable for how long SSD's live over time with constant read and writes. And you never hear about the great SSD's as most people only post about the ones that fail. I have a few SSD's in laptops and none have even hiccupped yet. Samsung makes them quick and reliable. That is why Samsung is at the top of my list.