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Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P 2TB SSD review: A PS5 SSD you recognize at a price you don’t
The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P is a WD Black SN850P by another name. It’s a great PS5 SSD with good performance in a mature package, but with a stiff premium.
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The good news is that Sandisk is still putting out SSDs for consumers, and these are not just cheap replacements. The Optimus GX Pro 850P is a bona fide high-end Gen 4 SSD that puts Sandisk’s name on the WD Black SN850X’s legendary design. This means DRAM, TLC flash, and good performance for any role.
Like the Black SN850P, which is a Black SN850X made with a heatsink and for the PS5, the 850P is made for the console. Its heatsink is excellent, and it would fit right into your desktop PC, too. We wouldn’t recommend shucking it for use in a laptop, but theoretically it could work there as well. Our main concern would be the pricing, which is a bit steep – this is a nice drive, but you’ll pay a premium for it.
The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 850P is available at the same capacities as its WD Black SN850P forebear: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. This also matches the original WD Black SN850X and its later 8TB SKU. Prices at the time of review for the Optimus GX Pro 850P are $309.99, $609.99, $1,139.99, and $2,249.99. These prices are well above the $234.99, $494.99, and $1,019.00 that the Black SN850P is currently demanding. We think the prices will come down on the Sandisk drive, but be aware of the comparable alternatives when making a purchase.
The drive can reach up to 7,300 / 6,600 MB/s for sequential reads and writes and up to 1.2 million random read/write IOPS. This performance is at the top for a Gen 4 drive and, frankly, is capable of delivering an excellent experience even for heavier workloads. The drive’s warranty is standard at five years with 600TB of writes for every TB of capacity. The Optimus GX Pro 850P supports data-at-rest encryption through TCG Opal v2.01, but this is not explicitly listed for the SN850P, likely as this model is designed for use in the PS5.
Sandisk fully supports its drives with downloadable software. For the Optimus GX Pro 850P this includes the Sandisk Dashboard, which is Sandisk’s version of WD’s Dashboard, and Acronis True Image for Sandisk. The former is an SSD toolbox with all of the expected features: drive health and SMART monitoring, firmware updating, performance testing, etc. Acronis True Image is OEM-licensed software used for backing up files and imaging drives.
The Optimus GX Pro 850P is designed to specifically fit into the PS5 with an effective heatsink. The bare drive underneath is single-sided at 1TB and 2TB but double-sided at 4TB and 8TB. For that reason, the rated height is larger for the latter two SKUs. In general, this should not be an issue for fit in desktop PCs. The heatsink itself is finned for extra surface area for better heat dissipation and should keep the drive cool even under harsh conditions. It does not have RGB, unlike the WD Black SN850’s heatsinked SKU.
The drive label gives some additional information, such as a rating for 3.3V / 2.8A. This is ~9W, which matches the drive’s highest reported power state. This is certainly higher than the ~5W we see for many DRAM-less drives, which have half the flash channels on top of not having DRAM to worry about, but it is not enough to be a problem with this heatsink.
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