Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe SSD Review – Is 4TB of Data Storage the New Standard?

If anyone can say anything about Sabrent, it’s that they have hit the SSD scene with a punch.  Just a few weeks ago, we reviewed their top performing Sabrent Rocket PCIe 4.o SSD which topped out at 5GB/s data throughput and over 700k IOPS. Today, we are reviewing the first publicly available 4TB M.2 SSD in the industry.  Yes.  You can buy it right now at Amazon.

A 4TB M.2 SSD is pure gold, plain and simple.  Today we are also seeing an 8TB M.2 SSD for sale on Amazon, once again from Sabrent.  The question stands though as to whether 4TB is too much or will become the industry standard.   As much as it may be nice for the consumer, this SSD is geared towards workstation and enterprise  storage.  This is where the 4TB and 8TB versions of the Rocket Q will really shine.

So…let’s look a bit closer at what spells success for an SSD.  There is s sweet spot in SSD sales that intersects several features to include speed, capacity, value and warranty.  That sweet spot is something that every company has to consider as, if each feature isn’t worth it to the consumer, the SSD won’t sell.

Just as we don’t see the same sales for SATA 3 SSDs at 550MB/s these days, sales of those with a 64GB capacity are falling to the wayside as well.  Price is probably the most important factor and warranty simply exhibits the companies confidence in their own product.  Do I feel the same about an SSD with a 1-year warranty as I do with one with that 5-year guarantee? I don’t think so.

I remember a very lengthy conversation with Samsung a number of years back where I asked specifically why they wouldn’t make the jump from a 256GB SSD to 512GB in retail sales.  They went in detail to explain that, at that time, the sweet spot for consumer storage regardless of the medium, was actually only 128GB.  The average consumer at that time would be comfortable with 128GB of storage for their digital needs.  Have times changed.

SPECIFICATIONS AND BUILD

The Sabrent Rocket Q SSD is a PCIe 3.0 four lane M.2 SSD of the 2280 (80mm) form factor that follows NVMe 1.3 protocol.  It is available in 500GB, 1, 2 ,4 and 8TB capacities. Performance is slightly variable, dependent on capacity and performance of the 4TB version we are testing today is listed as 3450MB/s read and 3000MB/s write with up to 650K IOPS at low 4k random disk access.  The Sabrent Rocket Q NVMe SSD comes with a limited 5-year warranty and pricing can be found on Amazon for $69.99 (500GB), $129.98 (1TB), $279.99 (2TB), $719.99 (4TB) and $1999.99 (8TB). Check Amazon pricing now!

This is the Sabrent Rocket Q with the branding removed.  This is the ONLY company in the industry that we know of that actually uses copper branding to help with heat dissipation. This is a 2280 (80mm) M.2 form factor SSD and it is double sided, meaning components are situated on each side.

It contains Phison’s latest E12S NVMe SSD 8-channel controller along with 8 pieces (4 on each side) of 96 layer QLC NAND flash memory, and two chips of Nanya DDR4 DRAM cache. Note:  We had originally identified  this as Kioxia memory but it has an IA designation on it that is more attune to Micron 96L memory, although we cannot gain verification on the memory itself.

If you for any reason get the urge to rip off the branding from your Sabrent SSD, just know that this will void your warranty should return be needed at any time in the future.