Seagate Game Drive PS4 2TB Review

TweakTown's Rating: 80%

The Bottom Line

The increase in capacity of Game Drive for PS4 lineup offers a greater value for gamers looking to download more of their library.

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We have followed the Game Drive lineup over the last few years, from initial HDD offerings in Xbox and PS4 flavors to SSD models for increased loading performance.

The Game Drive for PS4 enters its second iteration with increased capacity options over the initial 1TB offering. These new solutions come in a 2 and 4TB capacity, with separate colorways and an overall enclosure size setting them apart. The 2TB model is a black on black enclosure, 12.1mm z-height with capacity of 50+ games. The 4TB model is a blue on black enclosure and is slightly thicker at 20.7mm, with 100+ game capacity. Each of these models connect over USB 3.0 and are PlayStation approved solutions.

MSRP of the 2TB Game Drive for PS4 comes in at $109.99 with a three-year warranty. The 4TB Game Drive for PS4 reaches $149.99 with a one-year warranty.

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Packaging is quite vibrant, capacity listed prominently at 2TB with an image of the drive to the right.

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On the back, we have mention of warranty at the top and features at the bottom.

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Included in the box is the micro B to A cable and user manual.

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The drive itself works on the standard portable drive form factor that we have seen in the Expansion and Backup Plus lineups from Seagate. We have PS4 branding at the top with the activity LED and a subtle Seagate logo bottom right.

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As mentioned, this solution uses USB 3.0 for connectivity, but I was quite surprised to see the micro B connector make a comeback.

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Internally, The Game Drive PS4 uses a Mobile HDD from Seagate.

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To get an idea of the drive's performance, I ran through a quick test with Black Magic Design and came away kind of impressed. This drive was able to reach 135 MB/s read, and 130 MB/s write.

Closing this out, the Game Drive for PS4 is an interesting solution. On one hand, we have a capacity-driven design which is great as gamers certainly like to keep games installed ready to go. Adding to this great colorway is that it matches the console's connectivity with USB 3.0. On the other, it appears we have a vendor in Seagate that has an overstock of old LM007 drives they need to get rid of. They have decided to use them instead of pushing out the new Barracuda models.

With that said, performance isn't that bad, I actually managed reached 130 MB/s read and write on this model which is quite good for a 5400rpm solution. I don't think games do a lot of sequential read when loading to make a 7200rpm solution make that much of a difference.

With this solution I think it all comes down to cost, the actual drive used in the Game Drive has a list price of $70 USD, add on a USB 3.0 enclosure we are close to $90. This puts us $19 dollars from the MSRP of the Game Drive for PS4, that happens to be Sony approved and will not void your warranty.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z370 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: Intel Core i3 8350K (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 32GB 4x8GB DDR4 3200 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H115i (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Air 540 (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Samsung 960 EVO 250GB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)
• Wi-Fi NIC: ASUS PCE-AC88 (buy from Amazon)
• 10Gbe NIC: ASUS XG-C100C (buy from Amazon)
• Thunderbolt 3: ASUS Thunderbolt EX3 (buy from Amazon)