Best M.2 SSDs in 2025

The M.2 solid state drive (SSD) is the fastest form of storage available for laptop and desktop PCs. It's also one of the best upgrades for existing systems, offering considerable bumps in performance over 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA drives. Choosing the right M.2 SSD can be tricky if you're unfamiliar with all the jargon and what to consider. Capacities can range between 250GB and 8TB, with speeds exceeding 12,000MB/s. To help you out, we've already rounded up all the best M.2 SSDs you can buy in 2024. We'll also explain the differences between SATA and NVMe M.2 drives so you can find the best drive for your PC.

Our favorite M.2 SSDs in 2024

PCIe 5.0 SSDs have been out for a while now, but they're really for enthusiast-tier desktops and not much else. Still, PCIe 5.0 is a big deal for SSDs since it pushes the limit from 8,000MB/s with M.2 running PCIe 4.0 to 16,000MB/s with M.2 running PCIe 5.0. While we're getting the second and third waves of PCIe 5.0 SSDs now, they're still not quite getting to 16,000MB/s, but Crucial's T700 is near the top of the leaderboard, and it's not even the most expensive PCIe 5.0

The rated performance for the T700, like with many SSDs, depends on the capacity you choose. For the 1TB model, you get 11,700MB/s and 9,500MB/s reads and writes, respectively, while the 2TB and 4TB versions will do 12,400MB/s and 11,800MB/s. That's exactly what we got in our review, at least in one benchmark. Many other PCIe 5.0 SSDs like MSI's Spatium M570 or Seagate's FireCuda 540 only get about 10,000MB/s at most on either reads or writes, so the T700 is definitely ahead when it comes to performance.

Because PCIe 5.0 SSDs are so fast, they also need to be more durable if they're going to last as long as PCIe 4.0 SSDs. To this end, the T700 gets 600TBW worth of endurance per terabyte. That's pretty much the standard for PCIe 5.0, though it is much less than the FireCuda 540's 1000TBW per terabyte. Thankfully, the T700 has a five-year-long warranty.

One last thing to consider here is the optional heatsink you can get. You need to use a heatsink with any PCIe 5.0 SSD, and if your motherboard has PCIe 5.0 SSD support, it should also come with an M.2 heatsink. If it doesn't, though, Crucial has a model of the T700 with a heatsink that isn't much more expensive than the regular versions. You should expect to pay at least $160 for the 1TB and $270 for the 2TB models, heatsink or not. Despite being almost the fastest PCIe 5.0 right now (that honor is taken by its bigger brother, the T705), the T700 sits at a lower price than many competitors, making it the obvious choice for most.

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 second fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD in this entire collection, and although it's more expensive than the MP600 Pro NH, it does have some upsides.

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 game loading times, lower CPU usage, and increase the amount of bandwidth available to the GPU.

The 990 Pro only comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities, but each has a variant with or without a heatsink. The models with the heatsink cost $20 more than those without, but you 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 (a maximum of 2,400TBW for the 4TB model), this SSD will last a very long time. If it doesn't, you can ask Samsung for a replacement.

The 990 Pro is probably one of the most efficient high-end SSDs, if not the most, but it does lose out to the MP600 Pro NH in some areas. It has lower sequential and random performance, slightly lower endurance, and is a little more expensive. Plus, early models of the 990 Pro shipped with defective firmware, meaning you need to update it ASAP. Still, the 990 Pro is viable for use in laptops (though not recommended if you care about battery life), and it's a good overall SSD, but it's not the best anymore.

While PCIe 5.0 SSDs have arrived on the scene, they could be better for everyone for a few reasons: they're expensive and very hot, and all that extra performance doesn't mean much for most users today. PCIe 4.0 SSDs will remain the go-to for the average user for the time being, and one of the best you can get (perhaps even the best) is Corsair's MP600 Pro NH, a superfast drive that comes in a wide variety of capacities and costs very little.

Although Corsair rates the MP600 Pro NH at 7,000MB/s and 5,700MB/s reads and writes, respectively, in my review, I saw it reach up to 7,400MB/s and 7,100MB/s in reads and writes. That's perhaps the fastest among PCIe 4.0 SSDs, though it's far from the 10,000MB/s or more on PCIe 5.0 drives. These figures come from sequential benchmarks, though, and the real test of performance is in random workloads. Even there, the Pro NH beat Samsung's 990 Pro and could even match the latest PCIe 5.0 SSDs.

What's great about the MP600 Pro NH, besides its performance, is that it comes in many different capacities: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. While the drive starts at 500GB, you shouldn't settle for anything less than 1TB since the performance on the 500GB model won't be any good. However, you might not have an easy time finding the 4TB, especially the 8TB models in stock, since it seems Corsair doesn't make many of them.

The only thing you need to worry about with the MP600 Pro NH is that it gets really hot and doesn't come with a heatsink, which means you're relying on a third-party cooler or one that comes with your motherboard. Unfortunately, this means the Pro NH isn't suitable for laptops or any PC without a heatsink. But if you have a desktop needing a cheap yet top-end SSD, Corsair's MP600 Pro NH is the one for you.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus M.2 SSD is nearly as good as the leader of the pack. It's somewhat slower than the MP600 Pro NH with peak reads of 7,100MB/s and writes of 6,600MB/s, but it has an 8TB model that's seemingly always in stock, very much unlike the 8TB model of the MP600 Pro NH. The Rocket 4 Plus is what you want if you want high data density.

The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus uses the new Phison E18 controller. It follows 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 for 700TBW, 1,400TBW, 3,000TBW, and 5,600TBW endurance, respectively. The capacity and warranty options align with what most other M.2 SSDs offer. 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. The drive also comes with a custom heatsink to perform well (though, given that most motherboards these days come with a heatsink, that's probably not necessary). There's also a separate thinner heatsink for those who want to install it inside a PS5.

We mainly recommend the 8TB model here, but it will cost about $1,000. That's not exceptional value, but having so much density is a selling point on its own, especially for PCs with few M.2 slots. The smaller capacity models are also good, but they're not quite as good.

Although Intel no longer makes SSDs, the team behind Intel drives like the 670p is still around today, operating under Solidigm. It's just started to launch its SSDs, but its P41 Plus drive is already 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: roughly $90 and $150 for the 1TB and 2TB models, respectively.

The biggest weakness of the P41 Plus is its 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 compensate for this, and Solidigm's custom Synergy software and drivers do, too. Virtually every other company uses Microsoft's default SSD drivers, but Solidigm's custom drivers boost performance by a decent amount despite being super low-end. Additionally, its 400TBW endurance isn't bad, either.

Many faster drives are available for not too much more: the MP600 Pro NH is just about $30 more, for example. 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 (the P41 Plus isn't nearly as hot as the Pro NH, for one). Most of us aren't always copying and pasting massive files, so choosing a P41 Plus might not be much of a downgrade.

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 top-rated 970 EVO drive as the mainstream PCIe 3.0 SSD before the new-gen drives arrived. It sports a V5 flash with 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. Meanwhile, random read and write performance is 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 for handling tough workloads, which is why it's one of the best PCIe 3.0 M.2 SSDs on the market right now. As a previous-generation product, the Samsung 970 EVO Plus is also not as expensive as it once was. It's still a really great drive to use in a budget desktop build or as an upgrade to your laptop.

Don't want to pay much for a 1TB SSD? Silicon Power's P34A60 SSD is for you. At the time of writing, the 1TB model is on sale for around $54, which is close to the lowest price you'll find for a good brand-name 1TB M.2 SSD. The P34A60 is an excellent option if you're on a budget or 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 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 won't notice the lower performance on this drive. The P34A60 is 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. If you don't care about speed, you can save money by opting for the P34A60. I would personally go with Solidigm's P41 Plus, Crucial's P3 Plus, or even Samsung's 970 EVO Plus, but the P34A60 is by no means unusable.

There's a 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 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 you'll probably 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 is even worse when you factor in performance.

The Rocket 2230 has some challengers in this space, like Corsair's MP600 Mini, and while the Rocket 2230 was pretty expensive in comparison at first, it has since fallen in price. It remains one of the fastest or fastest PCIe 4.0 drives that can fit in the smallest devices, and its price point makes it a no-brainer. It also comes in a 2TB capacity, which is becoming more common for these 2230-sized drives but still isn't a given for all models, like the MP600 Mini.

Choosing the best M.2 SSDs

Crucial's T700 is our top pick since it's the best overall PCIe 5.0 SSD, thanks to its high speed and impressively low price. It's not great for laptops since it consumes so much power and gets so hot (you'll want Samsung's 990 Pro PCIe 4.0 SSD if you need a high-performance laptop drive), but it's an obvious choice for desktops. PCIe 5.0 SSDs are obviously faster than PCIe 4.0 drives, but they're incredibly power-hungry and produce a lot of heat. This is where the included motherboard SSD heatsinks come into play.

If you're leaning towards a budget build, you'll need a PCIe 4.0 SSD. We'd recommend the Solidigm's P41 Plus or Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Both drives have similar performance and will do very well thanks to their still good random performance, but the P41 Plus is much more efficient and will be much more suitable for laptops.

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 peripherals like keyboards, monitors, and webcams play a vital role in improving your computing experience.

SATA vs. NVMe: What's the difference?

So what are the differences between SATA and NVMe and does choosing one over the other affect system performance? The answer to the second part is absolutely. SATA or Serial AT Attachment is a system bus that has been around for decades. It has been used for DVD drives, hard drives, and solid-state drives. With a maximum speed of 6.0 Gb/s, you'll see a SATA drive top out at around 560 MB/s. NVMe or NVM Express is a relatively new technology and is exclusively available to M.2 SSD.

NVMe drives use the PCI lanes from the CPU for better performance and higher bandwidth. With PCIe 5.0 now out in the wild, we've seen speeds surpass 14,000 MB/s, which is more than 20 times the performance of the fastest SATA SSD. This would allow the operating system, apps, and games to load considerably faster, resulting in a snappier system. NVMe drives can become expensive quickly, especially when considering a PCIe 5.0 drive with plenty of storage space.