Is it worth buying an expensive SSD in 2026?

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The best solid state drives (SSDs) you can buy today use PCIe 5.0 with the M.2 NVMe protocol. This generation of SSD can boast a read speed of over 14,000 megabytes per second, twice as fast as a PCIe 4.0 drive. But here’s the best part: SSDs are one of the gadgets whose price has soared due to the RAM shortage. As of this writing, a WD_Black SN8100 4TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD costs around $660. The initial list price for this particular model was $469.99 when it launched in May 2025. Is there really any point in buying such an expensive SSD?

For most users, the answer is no. When TechSpot compared PCIe 5.0 SSDs to their 4.0 and 3.0 counterparts, they found that there was little practical difference when it came to loading games, checking files, and copying files to drives. The previous generation of NVMe drives already accomplishes these everyday tasks almost as quickly as possible.

The blazing-fast speed of a PCIe 5.0 SSD is only particularly useful for very large transfers or heavy workloads. Primary use cases for a PCIe 5.0 SSD include high-end content creation, database management, and AI acceleration. If these scenarios don’t apply to you, consider a more budget-friendly option like the Biwin Black Opal NV7400 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD; the 4TB model costs $489.99 and the 2TB version costs $289.99.

Most people don’t need a PCIe 5.0 SSD, but the sad truth is that even a PCIe 4.0 SSD is too expensive in today’s market. If you want value for money, you may have to make frustrating compromises. Fortunately, SanDisk is launching new SATA SSDs at affordable prices. SATA technology is noticeably slower than NVMe — up to 70 percent slower in some of TechSpot’s intensive game-loading tests — but a budget-friendly SATA SSD like the Crucial BX500 costs $255 for a 2TB model, or as little as $66.70 for a 240GB version.

Another option is a traditional hard disk drive (HDD). Hard drives tend to be much cheaper, even in today’s market; you can get a Seagate 2TB portable hard drive for just $129.99. However, hard drives often have an average read speed of just 100 megabytes per second, which is several orders of magnitude slower than the latest PCIe 5.0 SSDs. Even so, hard drives are still worth buying in 2026 if mass storage is your main priority.

Ultimately, SSDs are usually the only practical option for running modern applications. Some inexpensive models are worth buying, especially since SSD prices are unlikely to drop anytime soon, but cheaper options may be more prone to failure. Before you buy something that seems too good to be true, check what users say about which cheap SSD brands are actually reliable.