Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 2TB SSD Review
Rocket 4 Plus – Best PCIe Gen 4 SSD?
Sabrent appears to have done really well in 2020, but they aren’t finished shaking up the SSD market just yet. Sabrent just recently launched the Rocket 4 Plus series and it just happens to be the best performing NVMe SSD that they have ever released. The Rocket 4 Plus is capable of reaching up to 7,100 MB/s read and 6,600 MB/s write!
It also happens to be the first very drive on the market to feature the highly anticipated Phison E18 controller that appears to deliver impressive performance at a better value than the brands you are used to seeing top the SSD performance charts.
The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is available in 1TB and 2TB capacities right now and they have a 4TB model coming. All three capacities are powered by the Phison PS5018-E18 controller that was manufactured by TSMC on the 12nm process node. Part of the reason the Phison E18 controller is so fast is that it features a total of 5 cores with 3 being ARM Cortex R5 and two being Phison Proprietary CoXprocessors.
| Product | Rocket 4 Plus 1TB | Rocket 4 Plus 2TB | Rocket 4 Plus 4TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $199.99 (Amazon) | $399.99 (Amazon) | TBD |
| Price Per GB | $0.20 | $0.20 | TBD |
| Capacity | 1000GB | 2000GB | 4000GB |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| Interface / Protocol | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 | PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 |
| Controller | Phison PS5018-E18 | Phison PS5018-E18 | Phison PS5018-E18 |
| DRAM | 1GB DDR4 | 2GB DDR4 | 4GB DDR4 |
| NAND Flash | Micron 96L TLC | Micron 96L TLC | Micron 96L TLC |
| Sequential Read | 7,000 MB/s | 7,100 MB/s | TBD |
| Sequential Write | 5,300 MB/s | 6,600 MB/s | TBD |
| Random Read | 350,000 IOPS | 650,000 IOPS | TBD |
| Random Write | 700,000 IOPS | 700,000 IOPS | TBD |
| Endurance (TBW) | 700 TBW | 1400 TBW | 2800 TBW |
| Part Number | SB-RKT4P-1TB | SB-RKT4P-2TB | SB-RKT4P-4TB |
| Warranty | 5-Years | 5-Years | 5-Years |
As you can see from the table that we put together above the performance of the Rocket 4 Plus series does slightly differ depending on the capacity of the drive that you get. All are backed by a 5-year warranty if you register the drive with Sabrent within 90-days of purchase. If you don’t register the drive you’ll only have a 1-year warranty.
Sabrent sent us Rocket 4 Plus 2TB drive to review that is sold under part number SB-RKT4P-2TB.
Sabrent has what we consider the best retail packaging for an NVMe drive in the business. We’ve reviewed over three dozen SSDs in 2020 and Sabrent offers the best unboxing experience! After you remove the shrink wrap youll find a full color box and then inside of that, there is a metal tin that holds the drive and the paper guide. The metal box can be re-purposed or saved to store spare drives.
Sabrent went with a black and copper theme on this model and pictures don’t really do it justice. It looks great in person and should go well with most themed PC builds.
On the back of the drive is a label that shows the full model number, serial number and place of manufacture.
The top label is actually a copper heat spreader, so we don’t advise removing it as it will help dissipate heat.
We have already taken a look at the Phison E18 2TB development drive and that double sided M.2 2280 form factor drive came bare. The Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus is based off that drive, so here is a picture for curious minds. You have the Phison PS5018-E18 8-channel NVMe Gen 4 controller on one end of the drive, two SKHynix DDR4 DRAM memory chips on either side along, and eight pieces of Micron B27B 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory running at a 1200 MT/s bus speed.
With the purchase of the Sabrent Rocket Q4 you also get access to the Sabrent Rocket Control Panel. The Sabrent Rocket Control Panel is a tool that allows you to review certain aspects of your Sabrent Rocket drive, from checking drives health to upgrading drive firmware if one is available.
You can also downloaded Acronis True Image cloning software for free. This software makes replacing an existing drive really easy as you can use it to clone the old data over to the new drive. A third utility offered is Sabrents Sector Size Converter. This converter is a small application that gives you a free and easy way to change your drives sector size, which may be necessary under certain data cloning scenarios.
Let’s take a look at the test system and then dive into the performance tests to see how the Sabrent Rocket 4 PLUS performs!