A PS5-friendly M.2 drive that also plays well with PCs
The TeamGroup T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series ($359.99 for 2TB as tested) is the latest of several M.2 internal solid-state drives we have reviewed that boast PlayStation 5 compatibility as a key selling point. Indeed, it meets Sony’s requirements for use with a PS5 console as well as working with a desktop or laptop, though the latter two will need PCI Express 4.0 support to make the most of the SSD’s performance. That performance proved good in most of our benchmarks, though it fell short of its rated sequential read and write speeds. The Special Series doesn’t unseat the Editors’ Choice award-winning ADATA XPG Gammix S70 Blade, but it’s competitively priced and worth consideration. Primed for the PS5 The Cardea A440 Pro Special Series is an M.2 SSD marketed mostly for its PS5 friendliness—even its label spells out P ro S pecial 5 eries. While some M.2 drives promoted as PS5-compatible, such as the WD Black SN850 NVMe SSD, include heat shields that make them taller and fit into the console rather snugly, the T-Force does so with plenty of room to spare (just over 5mm, based on figures provided by TeamGroup). The A440 Pro Special Series is an internal SSD comprising 96-layer triple-level-cell (TLC) 3D NAND flash. It’s built around a Phison E18 controller and uses the NVMe 1.4 protocol over its four-lane PCI Express 4.0 bus. The drive’s M.2 Type-2280 (80mm long) “gumstick” format is standard fare for late-model internal SSDs. (New to some of this lingo? Check out our glossary of SSD terms.) Available in 1TB,2TB, and 4TB capacities, the Special Series is aggressively priced compared with its peers. Among other PS5-compatible drives we’ve reviewed, the ADATA S70 Blade sells for 20 cents per gigabyte in both 1TB and 2TB flavors while the WD Black SN850 goes for 25 cents per gig for 1TB and 22 cents for the 2TB model. Along with the Special Series, there are two other drives in the Cardea A440 Pro stable. A similar model, also employing a graphene heat spreader, sells for $169.99 for 1TB, $359.99 for 2TB, and $909.99 for 4TB, while a version with an aluminum heatsink too big for the PlayStation 5’s SSD installation niche lists for $179.
