Today, the Corsair MP600 Mini 1TB, the best SSD for the Steam Deck,n is available on Amazon for a nice 23% discount. The SSD normally retails for $109.99, but it's on sale for $84.99 for a limited time.
The Corsair MP600 Mini 1TB gained a 4/5 star rating in our review for providing a high-end NVMe Gen 4 drive experience in a more compact form factor. Still, we did have some issues with its high pricing and limited availability at the time. With rated performance of 7 GB/s read and 6.5 GB/s write, this SSD has a deceptive amount of power for its size.
As of now, though, this new price point of $84.99 seems a lot more appealing. While that may sound like a lot for a 1 TB SSD these days, it's important to remember that this is a Gen 4 drive, and it's a compact M.2-2230 drive. Most drives at this capacity, speed, and size are well over $100, even from lesser-known brands than Corsair.
There are cheaper drives at this size available, but they're all significantly slower. If you hope to use this Gen 4 drive with a future device rather than just your present device (e.g., upgrading from Steam Deck to the eventual Deck 2), it's best to get faster storage today rather than have to worry about replacing it later.
That said, it is worth noting that while this drive and others like it are primarily being advertised toward Steam Deck users, the Deck itself doesn't actually use PCIe Gen 4—that device still uses Gen 3. However, handhelds like the Asus ROG Ally X do benefit from the bump in PCIe speed support, particularly with other souped-up specifications like more RAM on the Ally X.
