Adata Legend 960 review - Late to the PS5 SSD party

The Adata Legend 960 is the latest PS5-ready SSD from the brand. It boasts some respectable figures overall but lacks the wow factor in a world that’s already seen everything possible from Gen 4, and often at lower prices, too.

For this reason, the Adata Legend 960 cannot be considered one of the best SSDs for PS5. While more-than-serviceable at what it does, there are simply many better alternatives for storing and playing some of the best PS5 games on the market that make this Gen 4 drive unremarkable in 2023.  

Price and Availability

The Adata Legend 960 was released in October 2022 and is available in the US, the UK, and Australia in capacities ranging from 1TB and 2TB for $109.99 / £105.48 / $AU209.52 and $209.99 / £160.96 / AU$279.11. A 4TB variant from the company is coming but doesn’t appear to be available yet.  

Design and Features

The design of the Adata Legend 960 shares a lot in common with the brand’s budget XPG Gammix S70 Blade which launched back in 2021. That means that this drive comes exposed with a PS5 SSD heatsink with a sticky back to cool the components of the NVMe down. 

On the silicon, there’s the tried-and-true SM2264 controller, which has been around since late 2020. By no means a bad performer, it isn’t as powerful as the top-end Phison E-18 controller, as Silicon Motion’s offering tops out at 7,400 MB/s read and 6,800 MB/s write. Read-wise, that’s very much top of the line, but I’ve seen so many Gen 4 drives that excel to the 7,000 MB/s write mark, such as with the Kingston Fury Renegade, Seagate Firecuda 530, and PNY CS3140. Where the Adata Legend 960 does keep up with this NVMe SSDs is with the 176-layer Micron TLC flash memory, considering it’s nearly the cap for what NVMe 1.4 can do, that’s not entirely surprising. 

The Adata Legend 960’s heatsink is a nice touch but isn’t robust or sturdy. It’s thin and has an adhesive layer to connect with the silicon, making it ideal for the PS5’s M.2 port, but it doesn’t offer the same level of protection as what you’ll find with the Kingston Fury Renegade SSD, for instance. 

Performance

The Adata Legend 960 is a solid performer when slotted into the PS5 and has consistent file transfer rates of around 1GB / sec, which scales with the file sizes. Some of the largest PS5 games, such as Horizon: Forbidden West’s 99.69 GB, copied over in just 1 minute and 19 seconds. Death Stranding: Director’s Cut was similarly brisk, with its 69.35 GB of data transferring in 61 seconds, and Dead Space (31.15 GB) copying over in 27 seconds. These are fast rates, but this drive is ever-so-slightly slower than the Seagate FireCuda 530 and the cheaper XPG Gammix S70 Blade. 

In-game loading times aren’t much of a problem for the Adata Legend 960 as Dead Space can go from the main menu into gameplay in around 4 seconds, with Death Stranding taking 7 seconds. Again, it’s not the fastest I’ve seen from an SSD for PS5 in my years of testing them, but the performance overall is hard to fault. 

I feel torn with the Adata Legend 960. The sequential performance on display here is good, but nothing stands out about it. It isn’t cheap enough to rival the likes of the WD Black SN850 or the Samsung 980 Pro, nor does it outperform the Samsung 990 Pro. What’s here is ultimately a good SSD for PS5 but not a great one, not with Gen 5 SSDs already on the horizon.  

Should I buy the Adata Legend 960?

Buy it if... 

It’s cheap enough where you live

The Adata Legend 960 isn’t the most expensive SSD for PS5, so if you can find it for a low enough price at 1TB and 2TB, then it could be worth the price of investment.

You’re after an SSD for PS5 with a heatsink

The Adata Legend 960 comes with its own separate heatsink that applies straight to the silicon so there’s no need to DIY one here. 

Don't buy it if... 

You want a drive from a more well-known brand

For a similar price, you can get the likes of the WD Black SN850, Kingston Fury Renegade, and PNY CS3140, making the Adata Legend 960 a tough sell in a competitive market.  

• Do PS5 SSD read and write speeds really make a difference?