With the arrival of a new generation of consoles, console players were finally able to say goodbye to the long downloads that often bothered on old hardware, especially in games like “Metro: Exodus“and”The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt“. Now the ball is ruled by solid-state drives or simply SSD… They are designed not only to reduce downloads, but they should also allow developers in the future to create large projects with huge seamless open worlds, as well as use useful features like Quick Resume on Xbox Series X | S… On the other hand, the SSD format is still more expensive than HDD, which is why Nextgen manufacturers had to limit themselves to 1 terabyte and 512 gigabytes of internal memory per Xbox series x and Xbox series s accordingly, while Playstation 5 received an SDD of 825 gigabytes. In fact, even less space is available to players, and this is often a problem, since some projects weigh more than 100 gigabytes.
It seems that the trouble can be dealt with with the help of external drives, but with the new generation, everything is not so simple. Until Sony solves the issue with the list of supported M.2 drives, Microsoft uses on new Xbox a slightly different approach in the form of special certified extension cards. This is the only card on the market that has come to our test – Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X | S… The average price for this solution, according to the Yandex.Market service, is 25,990 rubles…
PACKAGING, COMPLETE SET AND APPEARANCE
The Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X | S comes in a predominantly white, single-ply cardboard box with a green bottom edge. The front side shows the card itself, highlighted in a glossy texture, 1 TB capacity information in the traditional packaging style of Seagate external drives, as well as the Seagate, Xbox and Designed for Xbox logos. At the back, the manufacturer posted a photo of the installed drive in the Xbox Series X, as well as a small description in several languages, which says that it is “additional storage at maximum speed for the Xbox Series X | S”. On the side, we did not forget to mention the support for the Xbox Velocity technology, which precisely provides high download speeds in games with large open worlds.
The package opens from the top, or rather the insides are pulled out by a plastic hook, if you peel off two stickers on the sides. The drive itself is placed in a special recess. For the convenience of its curing, the manufacturer has applied a tongue sticker, which can then be removed from the SSD without leaving any extra glue traces.
You will also find a quick visual guide and warranty information under the Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X | S carton. In addition, the card itself has a protective cover for transportation made of transparent tinted plastic.
The SSD expansion is made of metal and plastic, and it is about the size of a matchbox, only twice as thin. Dimensions are 50 x 30 x 7 mm, weight – 20 g without cover and 24 with it.
The front metal side is engraved with the Seagate logo, while the back contains various certification, serial number and other manufacturing information encrypted in a QR code. The manufacturer has embossed the Xbox logo on the plastic part, and also made small bumps for a comfortable grip when inserting and removing the card from the Xbox Series X | S. On the lower edge, the storage capacity is additionally indicated – 1 TB.
CONNECTION AND TESTS
The Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X | S fits into a dedicated wide slot on the Xbox Series X | S on the back of the consoles where the primary ports are located. You just need to insert the card with the correct side and the set-top box will define it as a Storage Expansion Card in a moment. The drive does not need to be configured or formatted like external hard drives as it is ready to use out of the box. In total, the SSD expansion offers 920GB (versus 802 on the internal storage) for content installation.
For testing, we used the Xbox Series X console and several projects optimized for new hardware (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Gears 5), as well as games available for backward compatibility with Xbox One (Cyberpunk 2077), Xbox 360 (Dead Space 2) and Xbox ( Breakdown).
To begin with, we tested the transfer of games from internal storage to a memory card and vice versa in order to measure the time of data transfer:
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Xbox Series X | S, 50.9 GB) – transfer to map: 1 minute and 35 seconds; transfer to internal SSD: 1 minute and 52 seconds; copying to a card: 1 minute and 28 seconds; copy to internal SSD: 2 minutes and 18 seconds.
- Breakdown (Xbox Original, 2.6GB) – Transfer to Card: 5.29 seconds transfer to internal SSD: 8.71 seconds; copy to card: 5.7 seconds; copy to internal SSD: 7.59 seconds.
- Cyberpunk 2077 (Xbox One, 59.4 GB) – Transfer to Card: 2 minutes and 31 seconds transfer to internal SSD: 1 minute and 50 seconds; copying to a card: 1 minute and 29 seconds; copy to internal SSD: 1 minute and 52 seconds.
- Dead Space 2 (Xbox 360, 15.4 GB) – Transfer to Map: 32 seconds; transfer to internal SSD: 34 seconds; copy to card: 29 seconds; copy to internal SSD: 30 seconds.
- Gears 5 (Xbox Series X | S, 91.2 GB) – Transfer to Card: 2 minutes 21 seconds transfer to internal SSD: 5 minutes and 3 seconds; copying to a card: 2 minutes and 20 seconds; copy to internal SSD: 2 minutes and 35 seconds.
Next, we compared the time it took to load saves directly from the game menu before loading a location:
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla (Xbox Series X | S, from the menu, autosave, to the Fornburg location) – 14.83 seconds (internal SSD) versus 13.76 seconds (memory card).
- Breakdown (Xbox, from the menu, manual save, to the beginning of the prologue) – 5.65 seconds (internal SSD) vs. 5.74 seconds (memory card).
- Cyberpunk 2077 (Xbox One, from menu, manual save, to Arroyo area) – 9.59 seconds (internal SSD) vs. 10.65 seconds (memory stick)
- Dead Space 2 (Xbox 360, from menu, manual save, to chapter 14) – 10.62 seconds (internal SSD) vs 10.55 seconds (memory stick)
- Gears 5 (Xbox Series X | S, from menu, load level “Act 2 – Into the Unknown”) – 9.09 seconds (internal SSD) versus 8.52 seconds (memory card).
We also tested the Quick Resume feature, which allows you to switch very quickly between multiple enabled games. We launched five projects one by one, among which were Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Gears 5, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2, and then switched between them in a different sequence, and they all started without problems in a few seconds from that the same places where they were left before switching to another game.
RESULTS
The Seagate Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X | S is the ideal storage solution for the new Xbox that lives up to expectations – fast and flawless. But he also has two big drawbacks, one of which pours out of the other. The first is the absence of competitors, and the second is the price.
The situation is that the average price of the drive is comparable to half the price of the Xbox Series X or the price of the Xbox Series S console, which may seem inadequate to many. On the other hand, this is so far the only option to expand the memory while preserving all the goodies of the console, and whether you need additional space or not, that’s up to you.
Author: Sergey Dyakonenko (Madnfs)
Read also: SEAGATE IRONWOLF PRO 16TB Large Hard Drive Testing…
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