Seagate 1TB SSHD Review (with Sony Playstation 4)

1. Introduction2. Changing the drive in the Playstation 43. Playstation 4 drive testing4. Closing Thoughts5. View All Pages

We are always disappointed when a big corporation such as Sony or Microsoft ship slow 2.5 inch 5,400 rpm drives with their consoles. The 500GB Hitachi Global Storage Technologies does nothing to help enhance the user experience, so it has been interesting to take a look at the Seagate 1TB SSHD drive today.

If you buy the Playstation 4 and are getting a little annoyed with some of the painfully slow game load times then you have some choices available. The best (and fastest) option is to buy a solid state drive. The downside with this is that you wouldn't really want to be compromising on storage capacity so you need to aim for a 500GB drive, or even bigger.

Even with falling solid state prices, this is expensive.

If you are happy keeping the same storage capacity, then the Samsung 840 Evo 500GB is £182.48 inc vat from Amazon. If you wanted to enhance the storage capacity as well as the speed then the 1TB version of the Samsung 840 Evo is £341.55 inc vat. This is basically the same price as the Playstation 4 console (£349.00 inc vat) – so for most people it wouldn't make a lot of sense.

The other, more cost effective option is to buy a Hybrid 2.5 inch drive, such as the Seagate 1TB SSHD we have analysed today. This drive is in stock at etailers such as Overclockers – who have it available for £69.99 inc vat, with a free pen drive to help with the Playstation 4 OS installation.

This hybrid drive adopts 8GB of Solid State cache to help boost overall performance. The Playstation 4 benefits from a noticeable reduction in game load times, especially with titles such as Killzone. We did find some erratic behaviour, although this is clearly related to the small 8GB NAND cache. It certainly won't get close to matching a pure Solid State Drive such as the Samsung 840 Evo, but it will enhance the overall experience.

When you factor in the modest cost and the fact you are still doubling the storage capacity of the console, it is certainly worth looking into.

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Pros:

• reasonably priced.
• will reduce load times over the stock PS4 drive.
• doubles internal storage.

Cons:

• Can't compete against a pure Solid State Design.
• A larger NAND cache would work better.

Kitguru says: For the price it is difficult to find fault with Seagates 1TB SSHD solution. Playstation 4 load times will be noticeably reduced.

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