Product: Corsair MP600 PRO LPX 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD (PS5 Compatible)
Type: Storage (NVMe M.2 SSD)
Price: $329 AUD (1TB)
Availability: Now
Link: corsair.com/Products/Storage/M-2-SSDs/MP600-PRO-LPX

There was only one downside that the shift to considerably faster storage for the PlayStation 5 had, and that was an actual reduction in storage capacity over the previous gen. No doubt it left many confused, surely a new generation of consoles would usher in the age of the 2TBs of internal storage? Instead, the PS5 shipped with a seemingly stingy 667GB of usable internal storage for game installations, less than the PlayStation 4 Pro’s 1TB.

The reasoning? Well, it launched with storage faster than just about every PC drive available in late 2020. Which also meant that it was a costly move for Sony. SSDs are a lot more expensive to make than the drives found in PS4s. And it was something of a gamble too because these off-the-shelf drives didn’t really exist yet. That and there absolutely needed to be compatibility with PC SSDs on account of installation sizes increasing to facilitate the shift to crisp 4K gaming, and the need to give players options when it came to upgrading.

Which is now well and truly paying off as the prices of NVMe M.2 SSDs with high-end PCIe Gen4 speeds have come down considerably. Not astronomically, mind, but in the sort of realm where adding some extra space to install more games on the PS5 is a very real option. Which brings us to the Corsair MP600 PRO an NVMe M.2 SSD that proudly proclaims that it’s PS5 compatible. And with it’s on-board heatsink and impressive PS5 level speeds, not to mention reasonable price-point, it might just be… the SSD you’re looking for.

Plug-and-Play

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Of course support for additional storage arrived months after the PS5’s launch, but that was mainly due to still very-new technology driving the fastest SSDs and the various companies out there still designing heatsinks, the interfaces, and actually manufacturing enough to meet demand. Where we are now is a very different place to when SSD expansion support for the PS5 arrived on the scene in that there’s a huge number of choices, makes, brands, and sizes to choose from.

Which makes this Corsair effort something of an easy decision on the account of the company’s track record in the hardware space and years of creating excellent storage, memory, and other components for the PC gaming space. And even though the Corsair MP600 PRO LPX SSD is PC compatible, the heatsink design definitely makes it feel like something tailor made for the PlayStation 5. Where installation is a fairly straightforward removal of the PS5’s plates and then screwing it in.

Though on that front we suggest following Sony’s intuitive how-to video.

Reading and Writing 101

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From there the console recognises that a new piece of tech has been installed, the drive gets formatted, and you’re good to go. As any SSD drive plugged into a PS5 needs to meet a certain level of performance the installation process also gives you a handy speed-test so you can see if it meets the “5,500 MB/s or faster” requirement. Which the Corsair MP600 PRO LPX SSD most certainly does; we got an output of 6,541.936 MB/s in terms of read-speed.

Which, as is the way with one number being higher than another, results in loading times faster than the PS5’s already quick internal storage.

Specs

• Form Factor: M.2 2280
  
• Type: NVMe PCIe 4.0 NVMe
  
• Sequential Read: Up to 7,100 MB/s
  
• Sequential Write: Up to 5,800 MB/s
  
• Capacity: 1TB (500GB, 2TB, and 4TB also available)

That said you’re looking at a reduction measured in a couple of seconds or milliseconds, but even so it takes the fastest console available and makes it just that little bit faster. In terms of capacity the 1TB model tested here is definitely the sweet spot when it comes to price and what you’ve got to play with, you wouldn’t want to go smaller.

And with that we had no issue firing up games, so much so that the whole process is smooth enough that you won’t really notice where a game is actually installed unless you’re in data management mode. If there’s one downside to the Corsair MP600 PRO LPX SSD it’s that the look and feel of the heatsink seems better suited to PS5 than PC, though on that front Corsair has provided us with materials to suggest that on PC you can obtain even higher read-speeds than what we found when plugged into a PS5.

In the end, if you’re one of the lucky ones out there with a PlayStation 5 then no doubt you’ve already considered upgrading the storage capacity of your console. And on that front Corsair’s PS5 Compatible SSD is definitely worth considering.