Hello and welcome to this article on the best value NVMe drives available today. NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) is a relatively new protocol, designed for accessing high-speed storage media that brings many advantages over legacy spinning HDD and even SATA SSD.
NVMe uses your computer’s PCIe lanes, supercharging the bandwidth, allowing games to load in a fraction of the time, while content creators can copy large video files in seconds, instead of hours. NVMe does however come at a premium price, as they cost a lot more per GB than the other two slower SATA formats.
However, with the release of the Sony PlayStation 5 ($449.99) and Microsoft XBox Series X ($449.00) consoles, NVMe prices will certainly drop, as these are the first console to ever feature NVMe, drastically reducing game load times compared to previous generations, while bringing NVMe to the masses.
Table of Contents
Best Value NVMe Drives
NVMe does still have some way to go before it completely replaces HDD and SATA SSD drives, but they are certainly in a much more affordable position than what they were even a few or two ago. You can actually get a 1TB NVMe for a very good price, as we will see below.
Before we start, you will notice a very detailed table, listing all the best NVMe drives currently on the market, together with all their specs.
The table is already sorted in order of best value for your convenience, but continue to read further for more detailed information on each drive.
Value vs Cheap
Alrighty folks, let’s start with the first question on everyone’s mind – “what is the best value NVMe drive?“
Let me begin to answer this by stating that “cheapest” doesn’t equate to the “best value“. These two terms are very different, although often seen as the same thing.
As this section is solely focused on value, I will only cover the NVMe drives that offer the lowest Cost per GB in relation to their current MSRP (manufacturer’s suggested retail prices) on Amazon.
Reason being is that this is the first thing most people (including myself) look for when buying any storage – “how much space can I get for my money?“.
For example:
- The ADATA Swordfish 250GB NVMe Drive (Price not available) is by far the cheapest drive on the market, but it’s definitely not the best value, based on its storage capacity and performance, on a per $ (US dollar) value of $0.15/GB. Its larger brother, the ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) does cost more, but offers a much lower $0.09/GB, resulting in far better value.
Do note that the following list will generally consist of NVMe drives of lower performance, in order to accommodate the extra storage capacities at the lower price point. I have another section below that covers the Best Performance per $ if you are more concerned about getting the best performance for your money.
Also note that because we are using the MSRP, these cost/GB calculations naturally do not include any discounts or sales (such a Black Friday) that might reduce the price of the NVMe drives even further.
Obviously any discount or sale price makes the cost/GB even lower, making it even more attractive, compared to the MSRP. So make sure to jump onto any sales you find before they end.
Don’t worry, I make this very easy for you as well.
Below you will see links to all the products I mention, giving up to date prices straight from Amazon, including both the standard and sale price, so you can easily see what products are on special.
With all that said, let’s dive in and look at what the best value NVMe drives are.
1. ADATA Swordfish NVMe Drives ($0.09/GB)
ADATA Swordfish NVMe Drive Specs
- Capacities: 250GB/500GB/1TB/2TB
- Interface: M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x
- Sequential Read: 1800/1800/1800/1800 MB/s
- Sequential Write: 900/1400/1400/1400 MB/s
- Random Read: 130k/160k/180k/180k IOPs
- Random Write: 100k/100k/180k/180k IOPs
- NAND: Sandisk 3-bit TLC 96L
- DRAM: None
- Controller: Realtek RTS5763DL
- Endurance: 120/240/480/960 TBW
- Warranty: 5yrs
So, I have already let the cat out the bag by revealing the best value NVMe drive in my above example, which is the ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available).
At a mere $0.09/GB, this NVMe Drive is the uncontested champion in terms of value, netting yourself an amazing 1TB of storage, all for a steal of a price point that is around the same as the Samsung 970 EVO 500GB NVMe Drive ($89.90).
Same price for double the storage – hell yeah!
Naturally the Samsung NVMe drives offer much better performance, but you cannot overlook the massive savings to be had here.
In saying that, the ADATA Swordfish offers 1,800MB/s Sequential Read and 1,400MB/s Sequential Write speeds, which certainly isn’t shabby, but nowhere near the 3,400MB/s Sequential Read and 2,300MB/s Sequential Write speeds of the Samsung 970 EVO.
There are two caveats here though, as all is not what it seems.
A major contributing factor of its slower speeds is due to its lack of DRAM, which then requires the NVMe Host Memory Buffer (HMB) to drive a few MB of DRAM from the host when doing any form of task. While this lowers manufacturing costs, it heavily impacts performance, as everything has to work directly within the controller or on the NAND itself. The Samsung 970 EVO on the other hand, has built in DDR4 DRAM.
This is why you will also see some Amazon reviewers mention that the NVMe drive under-performs in some real world usage cases.
While the ADATA Swordfish claims to offer a higher endurance level of 480 TBW, compared to the 300 TBW of the Samsung, there are other Amazon reviewers stating that their drives did fail and/or lose sectors, pointing to lower quality components and lack of quality control.
With all the above said, the ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) is the best value NVMe drive you can buy, but do be cautious, as I wouldn’t store any important information on it in case of failure.
- Interface:M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe 1.3
- Read/Write speed up to 1800/1200MB/s Performance varied by drive...
- Fast performance with SLC Caching and host memory buffer
Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
---|---|---|---|---|
ADATA Swordfish 250GB 3D NAND PCIe... | Buy Now | |||
ADATA Swordfish 500GB 3D NAND PCIe... | $75.00 | Buy Now | ||
ADATA Swordfish 2TB 3D NAND PCIe Gen3x4... | 195 Reviews | Buy Now | ||
SAMSUNG (MZ-V7E500BW) 970 EVO SSD 500GB... | $99.99 $89.90 | Buy Now | ||
SAMSUNG 970 EVO SSD 1TB - M.2 NVMe... | $179.99 $157.99 | Buy Now |
2. Crucial P2 NVMe Drives ($0.10/GB)
Crucial P2 NVMe Drive Specs
- Capacities: 250GB/500GB/1TB/2TB
- Interface: M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x
- Sequential Read: 2100/2300/2400/2400 MB/s
- Sequential Write: 1150/940/1800/1900 MB/s
- Random Read: 170k/95k/NA/NA IOPs
- Random Write: 260k/215k/NA/NA IOPs
- NAND: Micron 3-bit TLC 96L
- DRAM: None
- Controller: Phison E13T
- Endurance: 150/300/450/NA TBW
- Warranty: 5yrs
Next up is yet another 1TB NVMe drive, the Crucial P2 1TB NVMe Drive ($93.79) which offers a very respectable value of only $0.10/GB.
While costing slightly more than the ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available), the Crucial P2 1TB NVMe offers faster 2,400MB/s Sequential Read and 1,800MB/s Sequential Write speeds.
Well on paper at least…
Much like the ADATA Swordfish, the Crucial P2 is also a DRAM-less design, meaning that it too will suffer from severe slowdowns, in most cases only meeting half of its advertised speeds. Again, many Amazon reviewers make mention of this.
Much like ADATA, Crucial cut corners in order to get the price down, but again this comes at a loss of quality and performance. This is again coupled with possible data loss, thus my advice would again be to not store any important information on it in case of failure.
The other capacity Crucial P2 NVMe drives also offer great value, with the Crucial P2 2TB NVMe Drive ($121.99) coming in at $0.11/GB and the Crucial P2 500GB NVMe Drive ($69.99) at $0.12/GB.
- Capacity: Up to 2TB with sequential reads or writes up to...
- NVMe PCIe interface, marking the next step in storage innovation
- Includes SSD management software for performance optimization, data...
Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Crucial P2 250GB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2... | Buy Now | |||
Crucial P2 500GB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2... | $69.99 | Buy Now | ||
Crucial P2 2TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD... | $164.99 $121.99 | Buy Now |
3. Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe Drives ($0.11/GB)
Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe Drive Specs
- Capacities: 500GB/1TB/2TB/4TB
- Interface: M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x
- Sequential Read: 2000/3200/3200/3200 MB/s
- Sequential Write: 1000/2000/3000/3000 MB/s
- Random Read: 95k/125k/255k/550k IOPs
- Random Write: 250k/500k/670k/680k IOPs
- NAND: Micron 4-bit QLC 96L
- DRAM: DDR4
- Controller: SMI SM2263EN
- Endurance: 120/260/530/940 TBW
- Warranty: 5yrs
Coming in a solid 3rd position is the Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) coming in at $0.11/GB.
While more expensive than the above two NVMe drives on this list, the Sabrent Rocket Q is a performance beast with 3,200MB/s Sequential Read and 2,000MB/s Sequential Write speeds.
Comparing that to the ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available)1,800MB/s Sequential Read and 1,400MB/s Sequential Write speeds, you can quickly see just how much faster Sabrent Rocket Q is.
The Sabrent Rocket Q does however fall short when it comes to its lower 260 TBW, due to its QLC NAND Flash memory, which is less program/erase cycles than the TLC of the ADATA and Crucial.
As a gamer, you shouldn’t really be too concerned about this, as you aren’t uninstalling and reinstalling games everyday. As a content creator, this does become more of a factor, as you are copying and deleting large video files weekly, even daily, which will contribute towards the finite amount of TBW (terabyte written) available.
Beside this downside, the Sabrent Rocket Q has over 12,000 reviews on Amazon, while maintaining a solid 5/5 star rating.
This is because it is the first NVMe drive on this list that has actually DDR3 DRAM, meaning it will actually perform at its advertised speeds. For this reason alone, I would actually put the Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) as my first choice purchase, even though it is slightly more expensive.
The Sabrent Rocket NVMe 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) – which is a different model (Sabrent have the most confusing naming system i have ever seen) is also amazing value at $0.13/GB, offering even faster 3,400MB/s Sequential Read and 3,000MB/s Sequential Write speeds, triple the Random Read & Write of any of the above NVMe drives.
Above this, it as well offers an absolute gigantic 1,665 TBW, thanks to its superior 3D TLC NAND.
So if you are worried about the low endurance of the Sabrent Rocket Q, check out the Sabrent Rocket NVMe instead.
- M.2 PCIe Gen3 x 4 Interface.
- PCIe 3.1 Compliant / NVMe 1.3 Compliant.
- Power Management Support for APST / ASPM / L1.2.
4. Western Digital Blue SN550 NVMe Drives ($0.12/GB)
WD Blue SN550 NVMe Drive Specs
- Capacities: 250GB/500GB/1TB/2TB
- Interface: M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x
- Sequential Read: 2400/2400/2400/2600 MB/s
- Sequential Write: 950/1750/1950/1800 MB/s
- Random Read: 170k/300k/410k/360k IOPs
- Random Write: 135k/240k/405k/384k IOPs
- NAND: Sandisk 3-bit TLC 96L
- DRAM: None
- Controller: WD Architecture
- Endurance: 150/300/600/900 TBW
- Warranty: 5yrs
Before diving into the WD Blue SN550 1TB NVMe Drive ($64.02) specs, I want to quickly make a note here.
If you look at the table, you should see that the XPG SX6000 PRO 1TB NVMe Drive ($76.27) actually rates higher in terms of value at $0.11/GB than the SN550 1TB, which is at $0.12/GB.
The reason I don’t list the XPG SX6000 PRO as the better NVMe drive, is because it is quite frankly a rubbish product, with many Amazon reviewers saying how their drives died within months of usage.
This product is actually also made by ADATA, so it comes at no surprise that it has the same shortfalls as the ADATA Swordfish, including the lack of DRAM. They seem to just be cutting too many corners in order to drop prices, as it’s coming at a severe performance and reliability cost.
With that said, let’s take a look at the WD Blue SN550 1TB NVMe Drive ($64.02), While it is also a DRAM-less design, Western Digital seemed to have worked some magic, as there are no reviews of it not offering its advertised speeds of 2,400MB/s Sequential Read and 1,950MB/s Sequential Write, coupled with a 600 TBW endurance rating.
Again, you can also take a look at the smaller WD Blue SN550 500GB NVMe Drive ($50.00) if you are wanting something cheaper and with less capacity, as it too has a $0.12/GB value.
In actual fact, if you are looking for a 500GB NVMe drive, then the WD Black SN750 500GB NVMe Drive ($74.99) is Western Digital’s pro level version of the SN550 Blue, and a much better buy.
Coming in at only $0.13/GB, the WD Black SN750 is great value considering its insanely fast 3,430MB/s Sequential Read and 2,600MB/s Sequential Write speeds thanks to its DDR4 memory, coupled with an equivalent 300 TBW endurance rating.
At only $3 more, I would definitely go for the SN750 in terms of a 500GB NVMe drive.
Here again, there is another ADATA product, the XPG SX8200 PRO 1TB NVMe Drive ($79.99), offering twice the capacity for the same $0.13/GB value, but again this product too suffers from bad reviews of lower than advertised speeds, even though it has DDR3 memory this time round.
I would again give anything from ADATA a skip, opting for Western Digital who have a far better track record, spanning decades in the storage industry.
- Boost your system's performance with next-gen NVMe SSDs
- Over 4 times faster than our SATA SSDs
- Western Digital designed controller and firmware for optimized...
Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Western Digital 250GB WD Blue SN550 NVMe... | $37.59 $27.23 | Buy Now | ||
Western Digital 500GB WD Blue SN550 NVMe... | 39,392 Reviews | $89.99 $50.00 | Buy Now | |
Western Digital 2TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe... | $259.99 $149.00 | Buy Now | ||
WD_BLACK 250GB SN750 NVMe Internal... | $79.99 $46.00 | Buy Now | ||
WD_BLACK 500GB SN750 NVMe Internal... | $129.99 $74.99 | Buy Now | ||
Western Digital 1TB SN750 NVMe Internal... | $99.99 | Buy Now | ||
WD_BLACK 2TB SN750 NVMe Internal Gaming... | 28,879 Reviews | $379.99 $191.22 | Buy Now | |
XPG SX6000 Pro 1TB PCIe 3D NAND PCIe... | $76.27 | Buy Now | ||
ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1TB 3D NAND NVMe... | $84.99 $79.99 | Buy Now |
5. Kingston A2000 NVMe Drives ($0.13/GB)
Kingston A2000 NVMe Drive Specs
- Capacities: 250GB/500GB/1TB
- Interface: M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x
- Sequential Read: 2100/2200/2200 MB/s
- Sequential Write: 1100/2000/2000 MB/s
- Random Read: 150k/180k/250k IOPs
- Random Write: 180k/200k/220k IOPs
- NAND: Micron 3-bit TLC 96L
- DRAM: DDR4
- Controller: SMI SM2263EN
- Endurance: 150/350/600 TBW
- Warranty: 5yrs
Another great value 500G VNVMe drive is the Kingston A2000 500GB NVMe Drive (Price not available) at a value price of $0.13/GB
This drive offers 2,200MB/s Sequential Read and 2,000MB/s Sequential Write speeds thanks to its DDR4 Memory, together with TLC NAND offering a 350 TBW endurance rating.
Unfortunately for Kingston, the WD Black SN750 500GB NVMe Drive ($74.99) is a superior drive at the same price point, and would thus recommend it instead.
Kingston also offer their larger Kingston A2000 1TB NVMe Drive ($65.69) at a value price of $0.14/GB, which is more value than the WD Black SN750 1TB NVMe Drive ($99.99) at its much higher $0.25/GB.
Although, here again, Kingston lose out to the Sabrent Rocket NVMe 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) which is better value at $0.13/GB compared to the Kingston’s $0.14/GB, not to mention being much faster, with a far superior endurance rating of 1,665 TBW compared to the Kingston’s 600 TBW.
With all that said, Kingston NVMe drives have over 3,300 Amazon reviews and a solid 5/5 star rating, so their products are definitely doing something right, they just need to reevaluate their pricing to be slightly cheaper than the competition who offer better performance at the same price point.
- NVMe PCIe performance at a fraction of the cost
- Supports a full security suite (TCG Opal, XTS AES 256 bit, eDrive)
- Ideal for Ultrabooks and small-form-factor PC (SFF PC) systems
Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Kingston 250GB A2000 M.2 2280 Nvme... | Buy Now | |||
Kingston 500GB A2000 M.2 2280 Nvme... | Buy Now |
Best Value NVMe Conclusion
It’s fantastic to see that all of the top 4 best value NVMe drives were all1TB NVMe versions.
This really shows just how far NVMe pricing has come and really opens the doors to anyone being able to have access to fast NVMe speeds while not being stuck with a mesley and almost unusable 250GB of storage, which in these days can be filled up with a single game or two.
Best Value 1TB NVMe Drive
While the ADATA Swordfish 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) and Crucial P2 1TB NVMe Drive ($93.79) might offer the best value pricing, they aren’t the best quality in terms of either performance and reliability, as well as being void of and DRAM.
For that reason, I would highly recommend opting for the Sabrent Rocket Q 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available) or Sabrent Rocket NVMe 1TB NVMe Drive (Price not available), as they offer much higher speeds thanks to their built in DRAM, while also offer fantastic endurance.
Best Value 500GB NVMe Drive
If you are looking for something smaller than 1TB, then the WD Black SN750 500GB NVMe Drive ($74.99) is by far the best choice offering pro level performance at the same price as the mid/entry level alternatives.
500GB is the perfect capacity for an OS boot drive for a PC or Laptop. With its ultra low price point, it definitely won’t break the break account, while offering an insane performance upgrade if you are coming from a standard spinning HDD or even a SATA SSD.
While a 500GB can also be a used as a secondary storage drive for a few games and/or work files, I would highly recommend rather spending a few more dollars and getting a 1TB instead, as NVMe slots are rare on motherboards and even more so in laptops, so always try to put the biggest capacity drive you can in the slots available to you.
Honorable Mention NVMe
Besides all the above options, you simply cannot do wrong with the best of the best, which is the Samsung 970 EVO 500GB NVMe Drive ($89.90) and Samsung 970 EVO 1TB NVMe Drive ($157.99) range.
While they are normally more pricey than the above options, they are often on sale, with up to 50% off, making them the only choice for both performance and value.
More PC Buying Guides
Alternatively if you are looking at building a new gaming PC, make sure to check out my PC building and buying guides as well:
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Ozarc (¬‿¬)