INTRODUCTION

   Believe or not even though PCIe 4.0 compatible solid state drives (and even graphics cards) are far from many in number currently PCIe 5.0 is actually coming very soon. Just for the record even though PCIe 4.0 supports speeds of up to 8GB/s PCIe 5.0 supports double that, meaning up to 16GB/s (theoretical numbers always) so we should see M.2 NVMe SSDs with speeds up to 14-15000MB/s even inside 2022. Still for the majority of users these speeds come second to capacity which makes sense considering that even 3000-3500MB/s (PCIe 3.0) is clearly more than enough for daily use, at least for 90% of the entire consumer base. The Rocket Q by Sabrent was the very first consumer oriented M.2 NVMe SSD to breach the 8TB barrier (review here) but since many of you reached out and asked for a review of the 4TB variant that's what I’ll be testing today.

   Sabrent is a leading American manufacturer of computer peripherals and accessories, bringing uniquely styled quality products to consumers worldwide. Sabrent’s commitment is to offer the latest technology and the highest quality consumer electronic products at an affordable cost to everyone. Since its founding, Sabrent has consistently delivered to market a full line of computer peripherals and accessories that incorporate style, quality and the latest technologies available.

   Just like both the 2TB and 8TB variants the Rocket Q 4TB uses 96-layer QLC (quad-level cell) NAND flash memory by Micron along with 8GB of DDR3L DRAM by Nanya (4TB model) and of course the E12S eight-channel (32 CE targets) controller (RKT-303 as Sabrent likes to call it) by Phison which sports several current technologies like SLC caching, StrongECC, SmartRefresh, SmartFlush, LDPC (low density parity check), end-to-end data protection, thermal monitoring, AES-256 encryption, ONFi 2.3/3.0/3.2/4.0 and TCG Pyrite/OPAL support. As for endurance numbers Sabrent reports an MTBF (meantime between failure) of 1.8 million hours with a TBW (Terabytes Written) of 940 (the entire Rocket Q line of SSDs is covered by a 5-year limited warranty via online registration).