Cost-effectiveness is, of course, the main reason to opt for a mechnical hard drive instead of the best SSDs, as solid-state storage will always be faster and more durable than an HDD. As Katharine found in her review, the P10’s read and write speeds were around half that of the Samsung T5. However, buying the equivalent amount of space across multiple T5s would currently cost you around £500, so half the performance is really not a bad compromise for a fivefold saving. Besides, the P10 isn’t slow by HDD standards specifically, being about on par with modern internal hard drives. It’s also worth pointing out that the P10 is not some bulky whirring brick like external HDDs of yore. It packs that 5TB of space into a remarkably small package - just 118mm long and 88mm wide. At 230g it’s also fairly light, about the weight of a family-sized chocolate bar (also known as a Rick-sized chocolate bar). Anyway, the P10 is a great way to significantly expand your data storage. Modern PC gaming is, after all, a constant battle for drive space. As game installs have ballooned from tens to hundreds of gigabytes (I’m looking at you, Warzone) we’ve reached the point where a 500GB drive can be maxed out by just three or four games. So the P10 is a great way to offload that Assassin’s Creed Valhalla install that you’re taking a break from, or store all the HD video captures of your victories in Apex Legends. And if you fancy expanding your capacity but don’t feel the P10 is for you, check out our list of the best gaming SSD deals for speedier drives on the cheap.
