Sony’s PlayStation 5 will support off-the-shelf M.2 SSDs, but only if they’re fast enough

During the company’s “Road to PS5” livestream, Sony confirmed that their PlayStation 5 console would be able to support expanded storage using off-the-shelf M.2 SSDs. 

So yes, Sony’s PlayStation 5 will be able to utilise PC-grade M.2 SSD storage devices, but that doesn’t mean that all M.2 SSDs will be ready for next-generation gaming. 

Sony has confirmed that its PlayStation 5 console will offer sequential SSD read speeds 5.5GB/s, which means that Sony’s next-generation console has faster storage than any currently available M.2 SSD. Even today’s PCIe 4.0 SSDs rarely break the 5GB/s speed barrier. 

This means that your existing PCIe 3.0 SSDs and early PCIe 4.0 SSDs will not be fast enough to meet Sony’s specifications. Thankfully, Sony will address this issue with an SSD certification process, which will allow consumers to but PC-grade SSDs with the certainty that they will be able to deliver PlayStation 5-grade performance levels. 

By the end of 2020, faster PCIe 4.0 SSDs will be available on the consumer market, which will allow PlayStation users to upgrade their PlayStation 5’s storage with ease. Unlike Microsoft, Sony isn’t using a proprietary SSD form factor for its PlayStation 5 console.   

The downsides of this design decision are obvious, as Sony’s PlayStation 5 console will only support M.2 SSDs that meet Sony’s speed, thermal and size limitations. This means that M.2 SSDs with heatsinks are unlikely to be supported; and that SSDs with the potential to overheat could also prove problematic. Microsoft’s design decision ensures that all of their SSDs will work flawlessly, whereas Sony’s design adds more consumer choice, at the cost of consumer confusion.