Sabrent Rocket Q4 4TB Review

Conclusion

Any time we’re looking at a drive of this kind of capacity there is always going to be the yawning spectre of cost looming over proceedings.

If you’ve spent any time at all in the hardware world you’ll be aware that pricing changes dramatically as products mature, getting ever cheaper over time once the technology trickles down to the mid-range models. That is something which has definitely happened in the PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives, with a 4TB model currently retailing around the £590 mark. The Sabrent Rocket Q4 4TB on the other hand, by virtue of being the first PCI Express 4.0 drive with such a large capacity has a small price premium to paid both for the faster throughput and that high capacity, with an MSRP of $860. The UK is well aware that a dollar price always is identical to the GBP price, so you’re paying around £250 for the kudos of having such a large PCIe 4.0 drive.

Looking through our performance testing graphs two things become clear. Firstly the Sabrent does what all the other PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives we’ve tested does, and that’s not be as quick as the Samsung 980 Pro. But if we forget that for a moment and instead focus on the fact that the Sabrent Rocket Q4 matches all the other PCI Express 4.0 drives we’ve looked at, but does it at a hitherto unheard of capacity. Those two things blended together are certainly an attractive proposition. Naturally you’ll need to utilise such a large capacity to maximise your investment, but if you are a heavy gamer with plenty of modern games installed, or even just spend a lot of time recording your gaming exploits in a long format Let’s Play styles then you’ll understand how quickly even a decent sized drive can fill up with video.

The Sabrent Rocket Q4 4TB dispenses with any worries about filling up your drive, and does so with an impressive level of performance too. Certainly when compared to all the PCIe 3.0 drives the Sabrent is blisteringly fast. About the only area it’s a little disappointing is in the write speeds when writing enormous – 1TB+ – files and that is an issue which affects all QLC NAND drives and is by no means unique to this model. Of course you don’t write files of those sizes, nobody does, and in general use it just runs flat out all the time. The Phison PS5016-E16 controller has all the features we’ve come to expect from modern drives, with SMART and TRIM, block management, wear levelling and all those handy elements which will prolong your drives lifespan.

If you have the need for such a large capacity drive and the foundation to take full use of its PCI Express 4.0 interface, the Sabrent Rocket Q4 4TB will leave you delighted at its fast transfer rates and voracious appetite for data.

  

Discuss the Sabrent Rocket Q4 4TB in our OC3D Forums.