Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun

Prime Big Deal Days cuts the excellent WD Black SN850X SSD to its lowest price in ages

Savings ahoy on the 1TB and 2TB models

· Rock Paper Shotgun

This latest Amazon Prime Big Deal Days really is playing all the hits for PC storage. As well as money off the finest Steam Deck microSD, there are savings to be had on our tip-top desktop SSD pick, the WD Black SN850X – which is a few years old now, but still produces superlative gaming load times. Or a lack thereof. The 1TB model is down to £70 at Amazon UK, but I think the Yanks have us beat here, as they can nab the 2TB edition for just $140.

It's been months since the Black SN850X has been this cheap, the 2TB capacity in particular. Infuriatingly, that was on sale in the UK as well, but has – I swear blind – just reverted to its pre-deal price as I’ve been writing this. Bah, so close. Still, 1TB will hold plenty of games, and the Black SN850X is almost guaranteed to be a performance upgrade over whichever SSD you’re currently rocking.

UK deal:

WD Black SN850X 1TB

See at Amazon

US deal:

WD Black SN850X 2TB

See at Amazon

Besides its short load times and non-ridiculous pricing, which remains a problem with newer PCIe 5.0 drives, the Black SN850X is also a dab hand at write speeds and general desktop usage; it scored a superb 3187MB/s read speed and 4261MB/s write speed in the CrystalDiskMark benchmark we use to simulate difficult file-shifting tasks. The latter, especially, remains the best result we have on the books. As such, it’s an outstanding all-rounder, without compromising on that elite gaming performance. Great stuff.

Assuming these prices don’t also revert in the next five minutes, you can have them either by holding an active Amazon Prime subscription, or by signing up for Prime’s free trial first. You can always cancel the trial after you’ve paid, which prevents the monthly fee from ever kicking in.