Sabrent Rocket 4 PLUS 2TB NVMe SSD review - Introduction

Sabrent Rocket NVMe4 2TB M2 SSD (PCIe Gen 4.0)
Breaching 7 GB/sec M.2.Class SSD performance for a mainstream price

Sabrent recently released the Rocket 4 PLUS M.2 NVMe SSD series, the new NVMe 1.4 storage unit is set to shatter records as it passes 7 GB/sec in reads and a number close to that in writes. Paired with a high-speed PS5018-E18 controller, this little rocket seems to become one of the most compelling SSDs we' have tested in a while. If you like endurance and brutal PCIe 4.0 performance levels, of course. Sabrent is a US-based company that is trying to inject note-worthy SSD onto the market for a while now, and hey ... they've slowly been expanding towards the EU as well. You can find them predominantly active at Amazon, and here's where today's tested product can be spotted for 399 USD/EUR for 2TB. That number rounded up to equals close to 20 cents per GB. And while that might seem a tad on the high side for NAND storage these days; you need to realize this is a TLC written NVMe SSD that has been fitted with Phison's fastest Phison E18 controller, capable of reaping havoc inside that storage array of yours. 

As you guys know, Sabrent offers TLC and QLC based products, we tested both in PCIe Gen 3 and gen 4 flavors. But for those that want top-notch high-performance at a fair price, this PCIe Gen 4 x4 M2 unit might be what you are after. The Rocket 4 PLUS is available in multiple volumes sizes. There's the 2TB version we test, a 1 GB model, and soon even a 4TB model. Sabrent is claiming numbers that run into the 7100 MB/s, Write Speeds, and up to 6600 MB/s for these M2 SSDs, priced at that 20 cents per GB. They a offer proper 5 years warranty (you do need to register your product for that). The TBW (TeraBytes Written—the total amount of data that a company is willing to guarantee can be written to the drive) rated 700 TBW for the 1 TB model and a proper 1400 TBW for the tested 2 TB model. 

The specs are exceptional but will this unit deliver what it claims? SSD is based on this years trendy 8-channel Phison's PS5018-E18 controller and, of course, has been fitted with TLC written NAND from Micron (96 layers). The performance will vary slightly depending on volume size; the more significant, the faster, though. The SSD is a Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe 1.4) M.2 2280 form factor SSD. The performance numbers of a proper SATA3 SSD offers these days are simply excellent, but with the more niche NVMe SSDs you can multiply performance 14x, and that offers serious numbers. The unit follows a smaller M.2 2280 form factor (8cm), so it will fit on most ATX motherboards capable of M.2 just fine. Anyway, wanna see how fast it really is? Will this be a proper Samsung 980 PRO competitor? ext page and onwards into the review then.