Best SSDs of 2024: Reviews and buying advice

SSDs, i.e. solid state drives, have completely changed the computing experience over the last decade. If you remember the heyday of the slothful hard drive, you know exactly what I mean.

These wondrous NAND storage devices have sped up previously ponderous boot times to a point bordering instantaneous, vastly improved the responsiveness of programs and games, and generally made the copious long wait times we all used to suffer a thing of a past. If you’re not using one, you should be and if you have an older model, consider upgrading.

Solid-state drives are nearly all NAND-based, but the tech they employ varies considerably. First to market, but now rapidly joining hard drives as yesteryear’s tech, are SATA SSDs — 2.5-inch form factor drives that connect to your PC via the same SATA port used by hard drives. We rarely cover SATA SSDs anymore, and it seems vendors have lost interest as they rarely pitch them to us. When they do, we cover them.

The market is now dominated by far smaller, far faster NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) “gumstick” SSDs that fit in the M.2 slots found on every modern computer. These come in PCIe 3.0, PCIe 4.0, and PCIe 5.0, and soon PCIe 6.0 flavors.

Form factors are one thing, but shoppers also want to consider the chips used by SSDs, the caching methods, warranties, and price. You can learn more about those details in our buyers’ guide below our recommendations.

Our recommendations cover both internal SSDs (NVMe picks listed first, SATA picks second) and external SSDs (listed last), with the latter largely being NVMe types in an enclosure on the end of a USB or Thunderbolt cable. Some older models are SATA internally, but those are increasingly rare.

Why you should trust us: It’s in our name, PCWorld. Our reviewers have been testing PC hardware for decades. Our storage evaluations are thorough and rigorous, testing the limits of every product — from performance benchmarks to the practicalities of regular use. As PC users ourselves, we know what makes a product stand out. Only the best SSDs make this list. For more about our criteria and testing process, scroll to the bottom of this article.

See also PCWorld’s guide to the best external drives if you’re strictly looking for a portable storage solution.

Our latest SSD reviews

• Teamgroup T-Force A440 Lite: This PCIe 4.0 drive is a decent performer but it was only 14th overall out of a cohort of 21, and at times slower than it’s less expensive sibling, the T-Force G50 below.
• T-Force G50: If you’re looking to stretch your SSD dollar, this drive should be on your short list. It’s an inexpensive, solid performing PCIe 4.0 drive for everyday tasks.
• Kingston NV3: This PCIe 4.0 SSD is proof that DRAM-less drives, meaning those that use a Host Memory Buffer (HMB) as cache, can offer competitive performance, while also saving the consumer some money. We just wish it had a more generous warranty.
• Adata 970 Pro: Gamers will love the heatsink and overall design of this PCIe 5.0 SSD. But it did turn in some middling single-queue performance benchmarks, making it a tough sell against the best of this ilk.
• Sabrent Rocket Nano 2242: Featuring a smaller form factor (22mm x 42mm), this good-performing drive was tailor-made for Lenovo’s Legion Go and Thinkpads — but it can also be used in a standard slot as well.

What to look for in an internal SSD

NVMe or SATA

Only look for SATA if your computer or device doesn’t support the far, far faster NVMe. Note that an M.2 slot in an older computer might be mSATA rather than NVMe. Read your user guide or manual to see if it’s NVMe-capable/NVMe-bootable. It should be both to take full advantage of NVMe.

DRAM or HMB

Some SSDs use DRAM for primary caching and faster random ops, while others forego the cost of DRAM and use a technique called host memory buffer (HMB). HMB does just what it sounds like, employs your computer’s memory for primary caching.

After a rough start, HMB has developed marvelous sequential transfer performance, though as hinted at — random ops still lag behind the DRAM designs. If you want the best overall, and especially random performance, then you want a DRAM design. You’ll pay for it though: HMB designs are often half the price, and the latest HMB models are every bit as fast with sequential transfers as their pricier brethren. Note that there are devices, such as the PS5 that don’t support HMB.

TLC or QLC

NAND is available in TLC (Triple Level Cell/3-bit) and QLC (Quad Level Cell/4-bit) flavors including a variety of sub-types. Thanks to a secondary caching technique of writing either of these types of NAND as older SLC (Single-Layer Cell/1-bit/far less error-checking required), there’s little difference in top speed — as long as there’s enough NAND allotted for the caching chore. There generally is unless you write a truly huge amount of data at once, such as in our 450GB write test. When writing natively (no secondary caching) speeds can drop to 200MBps for TLC and 100MBps for QLC.

The other difference is promised longevity. Most TLC SSDs we test feature at least a 600TBW rating, while QLC SSDs hover down around 250TBW. See our section on “TBW rating” to learn more.

PCIe generation

An NVMe SSD won’t perform any faster than the PCIe generation of the CPU/motherboard it’s on. I.e., installing a PCIe 5.0 SSD on a PCIe 3.0/4.0 system is pointless. In truth, as Windows and most Windows software doesn’t support multiple queues — a major factor in NVMe performance — you can save a lot of money without sacrificing a lot of speed by sticking with PCIe 4.0, even in 5.0 motherboards. Keep in mind that NVMe performance even on PCIe 3.0 is insanely fast and nearly impossible to gauge subjectively. Basically, don’t overbuy.

Capacity

As much as you can afford. This ranges from 250GB to 8TB. Note that SSDs less than 1TB quite often write slower than more capacious ones due to fewer chips to shotgun data across. More capacity also means more NAND for secondary caching, and less chance you’ll see any slowdowns on long writes.

Price

As low as possible, though there are certain performance advantages to pricier DRAM models as mentioned above. We also recommend sticking with a well-known vendor.

Warranty

Most internal SSDs are warrantied for five years, while externals are more likely to be three years. These don’t vary much, but make sure it’s not less than that. The warranty can be overridden by the next point: TBW.

TBW rating

The TBW, or terabytes that may be written, is the manufacturer’s estimate/rating of how much data may be written to an SSD before it morphs into a read-only device. This is due to cells wearing out. The higher the TBW rating, the better, though most users won’t write nearly as much data as they think. TBW is like the miles in an auto warranty, abrogating the warranty if exceeded.

To get the most out of an NVMe drive, you want to run your operating system off of it, which requires a system that can boot from NVMe. This will be any new machine, and likely anything produced in the last 10 years, but check. In fact, most new PCs already feature NVMe SSDs, so you’re likely purchasing an upgrade or something to fill the additional M.2 slots.

What to look for in an external SSD

Beyond IP rating (ruggedness), style, and portability, all you need to consider for an external SSD is the bus it runs on. USB 5Gbps (3.x) SSDs are limited to 550MBps, 10Gbps USB SSDs (3.1) top out at 1GBps, 20GBps USB (USB 3.2×2 or USB4) at 2GBps, and 40Gbps USB (USB4) at somewhere over 3GBps. Thunderbolt 3/4 are 30Gbps and 3GBps as well.

Note that 3.2×2 USB SSD requires a 3.2×2 port or USB 4 for the full 20Gbps. Attached to a Thunderbolt 3/4 port it will be limited to 10Gbps. Why the limitation, we’re not sure.

SSD, yes. Hard drive, maybe?

Life is simply better if you’re running your computer off an SSD. Chances are these days, you already are. If you aren’t — upgrade. Read that now and thank us later. That said….

SSDs still cost a lot more per gigabyte than mechanical hard drives, and currently top out at 8TB, while 3.5-inch HDDs top out at a whopping 30TB. We should mention that the latest hard drives can transfer data at nearly 300MBps, which is much faster than a decade ago and easily fast enough for most media streaming. On the other hand, HDDs, being less reliable and more delicate are best run in mirrored pairs unless used for backup. This negates much of their price advantage.

If you want speed and huge amounts of affordable storage, buy an SSD for use as your boot/operating system/main drive, then set up a hard drive as secondary storage.

How we test SSDs

Drive tests currently utilize Windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit running on an X790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of memory total). Intel integrated graphics are used. The 48GB transfer tests utilize an ImDisk RAM disk taking up 58GB of the 64GB total memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB, which also contains the operating system.

Each test is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the results are optimal. Note that as any drive fills up, performance will decrease due to less NAND for secondary caching, and other factors.

The performance numbers shown apply only to the drive we were shipped as well as the capacity tested. SSD performance can vary by capacity due to more or fewer chips to read/write across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Vendors also occasionally swap components. If you ever notice a large discrepancy between the performance you experience and that which we report (systems being roughly equal), by all means—let us know.

You can learn more in our article “How we test internal SSDs at PCWorld.”