Sabrent Rocket 2230 SSD review: The fastest drive for the Steam Deck and ROG Ally

Sabrent’s Rocket 2230 is the fastest SSD you can get for the Steam Deck, ROG Ally, and other tiny computers.

While most of the best SSDs are the standard finger-sized models, small laptops and handheld gaming devices like the Steam Deck and ROG Ally can’t use them since they’re just too large. After the Steam Deck launched, it spurred SSD companies into action to deliver some new, high-performance 2230-sized SSDs for these tiny devices. Sabrent’s Rocket 2230 is positioned as one of the highest-end SSDs in this tiny form factor, and it lives up to the hype. If you have a Steam Deck or especially an ROG Ally, this is the SSD you’ll want for the best performance.

 

SABRENT Rocket 2230 NVMe 4.0 1TB SSD

Fastest 2230 SSD

if you want to expand storage and don’t want to deal with slow read/write speeds, check out the Sabrent Rocket 2230 NVMe SSD. It offers up to 4,750MB/s read and 4,300 MB/s write speeds and unmatched reliability that you won’t get with a microSD card.

Storage capacity

512GB, 1TB, 2TB

Hardware Interface

PCIe Gen 4 x4

Brand

Sabrent

Transfer rate

4,750/4,300 MB/s Read/Write

Price

$110

Pros

• Fastest 2230-sized SSD
• Multiple sizes, including special 2TB variant
• Ideal for the ROG Ally and Steam Deck

Cons

• A bit overkill for gaming
• More expensive than other suitable drives like the MP600 Mini

Sabrent Rocket 2230: Pricing and availability

The Rocket 2230 comes in four different sizes: 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB, though the 2TB model is sold as the Rocket Q4 2230. They are priced respectively at $40, $75, $110, and $220 at the time of writing, making the 1TB and 2TB models the best bang for buck, as well as the most useful since the Steam Deck and ROG Ally can already come with up to 512GB of storage. In fact, you can buy the base model of the Steam Deck (which only has 64GB of storage) and the 1TB Rocket 2230 for less than the 512GB model of the Steam Deck. That’s more and faster storage for less.

Performance: It’s the fastest SSD in its size class

While originally I planned on benchmarking the 1TB Rocket 2230 in a regular PC, I decided to test it on my own Steam Deck running Windows 11 for a more accurate picture as to the performance you can expect on the most popular handheld PC today. One problem with the Deck is that it only has PCIe 3.0 support, not 4.0 support, which means it can’t harness the full potential of PCIe 4.0 SSDs. However, gaming won’t require the full might of the PCIe 4.0 interface, and you’ll only see bottlenecked performance in a few instances.

As for the Rocket 2230’s competition, I benchmarked it against the 64GB drive Valve includes with the base model of the Steam Deck. I tested the Rocket 2230 at minimum capacity and at 90% capacity so you can get an idea of how performance will degrade depending on how much storage you’ve used. Since the 64GB Deck flash storage is so small, I only tested it at 90% capacity. Finally, I’ve also included some data from our MP600 Mini review, which is the only obvious alternative to the Rocket 2230. The MP600 Mini was tested with PCIe 4.0 enabled (since it was tested with an Asus ROG Ally), and I’ll mark the results where that matters.

Starting with CrystalDiskMark 8, all drives were tested using the six default tests that use a range of block sizes, queue depths, and thread counts.

Scores are organized by read/write and are measured in MB/s. * denotes where PCIe 4.0 impacted the results.

It’s pretty clear that the 64GB Deck SSD is totally outclassed in every way in CrystalDiskMark; the Rocket demolishes it. Against the MP600 Mini, we can disregard the SEQ1M Q8T1 results since the Rocket 2230 is bottlenecked by PCIe 3.0 here, but in every other category the Rocket wins, and by large margins. You can especially see how both SSDs are very negatively impacted in sequential reads when filled up about 90%, but the Rocket handles it much better. In random workloads, the Rocket 2230 is also quite a bit faster than the MP600 Mini regardless of capacity filled.

In ATTO Disk Benchmark, all drivers were tested with default settings: a queue depth of 4, file size of 256MB, and from 512 bytes to 64MB, though I’m only showing every other data point from 512 bytes to 512KB here just for the sake of brevity.

Scores are organized by read/write and are measured in MB/s. * denotes where PCIe 4.0 impacted the results.

The Rocket 2230 is significantly faster than the MP600 Mini up until the 512KB point, which is when PCIe 4.0 starts to matter. However, one thing that this table doesn’t capture is how inconsistent the MP600 Mini was at 90% capacity. If you read our review of the MP600 Mini, you can see that it’s a little inconsistent when at minimum capacity and all over the place when nearly filled up. The Rocket 2230 on the other hand was super stable, and even though that stability is partly due to it being bottlenecked by PCIe 3.0, it clearly wouldn’t have been nearly as unstable as the MP600 Mini with PCIe 4.0 enabled.

For gaming, random read performance tends to be the most important metric for in-game performance, especially at low queue depths and block sizes. In both CrystalDiskMark and ATTO, the Rocket 2230 outperformed the MP600 Mini (and the Steam Deck SSD for that matter) in those kinds of workloads, especially when both SSDs were filled to about 90% capacity. That being said, the performance difference between these two drives in real games will probably be pretty minor.

As for non-gaming workloads, the only times you might benefit from the Rocket 2230 are probably going to be productivity stuff and if you plan on cramming as much data as possible into your SSD. The fact that the Rocket 2230 is so consistently good is really nice, so it really makes sense to get it if you really depend on good SSD performance and have a device that only accepts 2230-sized SSDs.

Should you buy the Sabrent Rocket 2230?

You should buy the Sabrent Rocket 2230 if:

• You want more storage on the Steam Deck or ROG Ally
• You want the fastest 2230 storage possible
• You need lots of room for big games

You shouldn’t buy the Sabrent Rocket 2230 if:

• You don’t really need more storage than you already have
• You’re just gaming and don’t need the Rocket 2230’s high but overkill performance

When the Rocket 2230 came out, it was the first of its kind since no company had ever made a high-performance 2230 SSD. However, this SSD has competition now, primarily Corsair’s MP600 Mini, and although it’s objectively slower than the Rocket 2230, it’s not that much slower. The extra performance with the Rocket 2230 is really nice, but ultimately unnecessary considering the MP600 Mini is often on sale for $90.

If you have the ROG Ally, I’d recommend getting the Rocket 2230 since the Ally is the highest-performance handheld PC right now and you’ll be able to take advantage of PCIe 4.0, so it just makes sense. As for the Steam Deck, the Rocket 2230 is a good choice, but I think the MP600 Mini makes more sense as it’s a little cheaper and its lower performance probably won’t bother you that much. Either way, if you plan on getting the Deck and one of these SSDs, get the 64GB model for maximum savings. By the way, it’s not very difficult at all to install an SSD in either the ROG Ally or the Steam Deck.

SABRENT Rocket 2230 NVMe 4.0 1TB SSD

if you want to expand storage and don’t want to deal with slow read/write speeds, check out the Sabrent Rocket 2230 NVMe SSD. It offers up to 4,750MB/s read and 4,300 MB/s write speeds and unmatched reliability that you won’t get with a microSD card.