This Corsair MP600 Mini 1TB SSD is perfect for your Steam Deck, and it's £70 from Scan
A 1TB SSD for a great price.
There are now quite a few options for smaller form factor SSDs that are excellent choices for your Steam Deck, Steam Deck OLED or other handheld console, such as the Asus ROG Ally. Today, we've seen the price of one of the top contenders, the Corsair MP600 Mini drop to its lowest price in a few weeks, with it dropping to £70 at Scan Computers.
The biggest thing about the MP600 Mini is ironically that smaller form factor. Normally NVMe drives like this one are produced in an M.2 2280 size, which refers to a drive that's 22mm across and 80mm long, but this drive is 2230 - 22mm across and only 30mm long. That allows it to fit into devices where space is at a premium, such as the Steam Deck - a physically larger drive just wouldn't fit, while offering a bigger uptick in drive performance and storage speed than you'd get with any of the best Micro SD cards for Steam Deck.
As much as we've seen the launch of the new Steam Deck OLED in the last few months, which has caused Steam to discontinue the 64GB and 128GB LCD models, adding a 1TB drive inside your Steam Deck offers a sizeable upgrade over pretty much every Steam Deck model in capacity and speed. A 1TB capacity provides at the very least double the capacity compared to the 512GB model, and of course offers a lot more than the currently still-available 256GB LCD model. If you've got a 64GB or 128GB model at home, then you're still going to experience the biggest benefits, although you can of course add even more space with an SD card - it just won't be anywhere near as quick.
This is because the base 64GB Steam Deck also uses slower eMMC storage that maxes out at 300MB/s, so adding the MP600 Mini can increase speeds by tenfold - it's rated for up to 4800MB/s in terms of both reads and writes, even though you'll probably see closer to 3500MB/s given that the Steam Deck is limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds. It's also faster than the SSD provided with other models, which maxes out at around 2500MB/s. So no matter which model you have, you're looking at a significant upgrade.
The only thing to keep in mind with a Steam Deck SSD upgrade is that it's a bit more involved than simply slotting in an SD card. You'll need to ensure you take the Steam Deck apart carefully, and while you do, follow this iFixit guide, which will walk you through the process step-by-step. In short, you need to access the internals, remove a heatsink, disconnect the Steam Deck's battery and swap the drive over. From here, you can use a USB flash drive to reinstall SteamOS. If you've worked on a desktop computer or laptop before, then this isn't any more difficult - it's just a bit fiddlier due to the smaller size.
If you're after a new internal SSD for your Steam Deck that's going to upgrade its storage in terms of both speed and capacity, then this Corsair MP600 Mini deal from Scan Computers is a no-brainer.