Seagate Game Drive 2TB SSD Review - The Ultimate PlayStation Accessory

TweakTown's Rating: 98%

The Bottom Line

Its beauty is unequaled, and its gaming performance is something to behold.

Pros

• + USB Type-C and Type-A compatibility
• + Sleek design
• + User experience performance
• + PS5/Xbox/PC/Mac support

Cons

• - None

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon

Introduction & Drive Details

Seagate is expanding its external storage portfolio with the launch of its newest external SSD. The newly minted Seagate Game Drive SSD for PS5 is officially licensed by PlayStation and certainly looks the part. The unit is beautiful with its white and black coloring and crisp lines. Its blue LED strip activity lighting really puts it over the top, immediately bringing to mind the visual essence of everything that is PlayStation related.

Seagate's newest not only looks the part, but it also delivers the goods in a massive way. This 2TB portable external SSD can hold an entire library of gaming goodness and when plugged in can deliver an astounding user experience so good that it is easily one of the best gaming storage devices of its kind that we've ever tested.

The Seagate Game Drive portable SSD we have on the bench today has a transfer rate of 10Gbps with sequential read and write speeds of up to 1,000MB/s. Included with the unit are both USB Type-C and Type-A cables for the ultimate in compatibility. Additionally, PlayStation Plus Premium Deluxe Trial is also included with your purchase of the Game Drive External SSD.

Speeds of up to 1,000 MB/s are certainly nothing that's going to distinguish the Game Drive SSD from its competitors as that is nothing earth shattering these days. What distinguishes this masterpiece from the rest aside from its stunning design, is its gaming prowess where low queue depth random reads mean a lot more than sequential throughput.

Now, let's get into the review so we can show you by the numbers why this external SSD is not only the ultimate for PlayStation, but also one of the best ever made for PC/Mac as well.

Drive Details

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Our pictures do not do this device justice. It is the type of object that must be held in hand to fully appreciate its quality and beauty.

Seagate Game Drive 2TB SSD (STLV2000101)

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$74.99	$74.99	$89.99	-	Buy
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Synthetic Benchmarks: CDM, ATTO & Blackmagic

CrystalDiskMark

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And there you have it, 1000/1000 MB/s throughput. Pretty standard fare for a portable SSD these days. While that doesn't necessarily get our juices flowing, we find its Thunderbolt like Q1T1 random read performance stunning. This is the best we can remember seeing from any similarly interfaced device of its kind, giving us a strong synthetic indication that the Game Drive SSD will deliver spectacularly as gaming storage. Impressive.

ATTO

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ATTO demonstrates the 2TB Game Drive SSD capable of delivering full sequential throughput at 128K transfers at the standard test queue depth of 4. Excellent.

Blackmagic

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When programming (writing) data, we find our test subject delivering more than any similarly interfaced device we've ever tested. Impressive. Additionally, the drive shows itself capable of keeping up with just about any video file format you would want to use, should it be employed for such duties.

Real-World Testing: PCMark 10, 3DMark SSD Gaming & Transfer Rates

PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark

The Data Drive Benchmark is designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices.

The Data Drive Benchmark uses 3 traces, running 3 passes with each trace as follows:

• Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total,?into?the target drive (write test).
• Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
• Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).

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Best-in-class performance here. It's by far the best we've ever attained from any 10Gbps USB device. This thing is running alongside the Thunderbolt portables. Incredible.

3DMark SSD Gaming Test

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. We consider it superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs on the actual game itself. This test is the same as running the actual game, just without the inconsistencies inherent to application testing. In short, we believe that this is the world's best way to test an SSDs gaming prowess and accurately compare it against competing SSDs. The 3DMark SSD Gaming Test measures and scores the following:

• Loading Battlefield V from launch to the main menu.
• Loading Call of Duty Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
• Loading Overwatch from launch to the main menu.
• Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch.
• Installing The Outer Worlds from the Epic Games Launcher.
• Saving game progress in The Outer Worlds.
• Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.

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Gaming is a performance metric that matters to most DIY consumers, especially to the enthusiast crowd that TweakTown caters to. We are now including gaming performance as a part of our external SSD reviews, as using portable storage for gaming duties is very popular among avid gamers.

Ultra-portable, fully compatible storage is a nice complement to any console or PC gaming device.

This is what the Game Drive SSD is designed to deliver - superior gaming performance. Here we can clearly see where that astounding 66 MB/s Q1T1 random read performance with CDM is paying off in the real world. It's a certified gaming juggernaut.

DiskBench - Transfer Rates

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We brutalize our test subjects with our extremely hard-to-swallow 100GB data block. This data block is the same one we use for our internal SSD testing and is composed of more than 62K files. 100GB is probably right at the upper limit for a single transfer, so as we see it, this is a much more realistic test scenario than a sustained filling of the entire drive.

Our test subject delivers top-tier write transfer rates, and above-average read transfer rates for its interface.

Final Thoughts

Seagate's PlayStation-themed Game Drive SSD 2TB is the most beautiful design we've ever encountered. The look and feel of this masterpiece are truly something that must be experienced to be fully appreciated. However, as important as visual appeal is, performance is what we care about most of all, and this is where we find Seagate's newest delivering the most where it matters the most. The drive absolutely killed it on our 3D Mark SSD gaming test, showing itself to be among the very best portable gaming devices ever made.

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Its beauty is unequaled, and its gaming performance is something to behold. Editor's Choice.