Samsung has teamed up with Square Enix to introduce a special limited collector’s edition package featuring the 990 PRO 2 TB SSD co-branded with Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.
The package includes a unique cuboidal box adorned with branding and imagery from FFVII Rebirth characters. Inside, you’ll discover a Samsung 990 PRO 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD equipped with its reference heatsink.
Designed to ensure compatibility with the PlayStation 5, the drive retains its original specifications, offering 2 TB of storage with a 2 GB LPDDR4 DRAM cache, and boasting transfer speeds of up to 7450 MB/s sequential reads and up to 6950 MB/s sequential writes, making it one of the fastest Gen 4 SSDs available.
This collaboration appears to be entirely pointless, especially considering that the bundle does not include the actual game. Instead, you’ll receive a special edition box that may serve as a visually appealing background prop for streaming, or simply gather dust among your other meaningless trinkets.
The Samsung 990 PRO SSD appears impressive on paper; however, as a company, Samsung’s NAND Flash drives have become less popular since the rise of the NVM Express (NVMe) interface, which has pushed storage speeds far beyond the constraints of SATA.
The Samsung 990 PRO (with heatsink) in a 2TB capacity can be found for $190 USD on various outlets like Amazon or Newegg. However, this price isn’t particularly affordable, particularly given the fierce competition from NVMe drives utilizing a PCIe Gen 4 interface.
There’s nothing inherently flawed with Samsung’s drives; in fact, I believe that Samsung’s SSDs may have the best firmware/software available on the market. Apart from a few minor hiccups, such as sporadic health deterioration of the 990 PRO, the only significant downside to Samsung’s drives would be their pricing and longevity.
Although the impressive specifications of 7450 MB/s sequential reads and 6900 MB/s sequential writes may sound enticing, the reality is that the cost of this speed provides virtually zero noticeable difference in real-world scenarios, particularly in terms of game load times, compared to other conventional Gen 4 NVMe SSDs or even Gen 3 drives.
Apart from its impressive speed and IOPS, the Samsung 990 PRO in a 2TB capacity offers subpar longevity, backed by a warranty of five years or 1200 TBW (Total Bytes Written).
While you may never exceed this value throughout the drive’s lifecycle, it’s more of a matter of getting your money’s worth rather than being sold a high-performance drive that may not last as long as other alternatives which are cheaper.
Take, for example, SABRENT, a highly popular brand of NVMe drives. This American company has established itself in the storage device market by offering consumers very affordable, high-performance products. These drives are crafted with high-quality components sourced from various manufacturers, distinguishing them from Samsung, whose internals are all developed in-house.
For example, you have the option to purchase a SABRENT Rocket 4 Plus 2TB for $10 less. It offers practically identical specifications with sequential read and write speeds of 7000/6850MB/s, but comes with increased endurance of 1400 TBW.
For budget-conscious consumers, the standard Rocket 4 2TB SSD priced at $160 is a viable option. While it’s slightly slower with sequential read and write speeds of 5000/4400MB/s, as mentioned earlier, there’s virtually no noticeable difference in real-world workloads or gaming load times.
The standout feature here is the 2TB Rocket 4’s impressive endurance of 3600 TBW which is three times as much as what the Samsung 990 PRO offers.
Silicon Power offers excellent value with products like the XS70 priced at $146, boasting sequential read and write speeds of 7300/6800MB/s and longevity of 1400TBW. Alternatively, the lower-end UD90 provides consumers with 2TB of affordable Gen 4 storage, featuring sequential read and write speeds of 5000/4800MB/s and 1200 TBW for just $110 today.
It’s evident why I’m not particularly fond of Samsung’s storage devices. While they invest heavily in marketing and offer superior software, their products are significantly overpriced for what they offer. Moreover, they no longer deliver the highest quality NAND Flash on the market and are easily surpassed in terms of value by other brands.
It’s because of futile marketing tactics like this partnership with Square Enix that Samsung persists in promoting their mediocre products to consumers. Square Enix finds themselves in a precarious financial state, with their only valuable asset being the Final Fantasy franchise, which they have compromised by embracing the Action RPG genre.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, touted as a recreation of the original cult classic, lacks much of its charm. It diverges from the original storyline when it suits the preferences of modern Western audiences, particularly when faced with problematic scenarios.
Samsung and Square Enix have put minimal effort into making this collaborative product stand out. You receive a unique cardboard box, and that’s about it.
The SSD itself remains unchanged, along with the heatsink, they couldn’t even be bothered to wrap in in yellow to reference Cloud, or even imprint a character onto the heatsink itself. Essentially, you’re purchasing an overpriced and subpar storage device that’s supposed to pass as a collector’s item.
In contrast, graphics card manufacturers often team up with game companies to offer certain titles for free with product purchases. The only way this collector’s edition would have any value is if it included the $70 insult to Final Fantasy fans everywhere for free alongside your SSD.
Samsung frequently offers discounts on their storage devices, bringing prices down to what they should have been initially. They also provide incentives like Steam Wallet codes, ensuring that consumers not only save money on the SSD purchase but also receive a bonus.
These bonuses typically range from $20 to as high as $150, depending on the device purchased and its storage capacity. The highest net gain usually comes from the highest capacity drives, such as the affordable yet subpar 870 QVO range of SATA SSDs.
This limited “collector’s edition” is scheduled for release sometime in March 2024, but to be honest, I fail to see the point. The product itself isn’t anything special; it will likely be sold for the same MSRP as the standard 990 PRO (with heatsink). The only added benefit is the so-called special 180 mm x 180 mm x 175 mm (WxDxH) cuboidal box featuring branding and imagery from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth characters.
A special cardboard box is exactly what I’ve been dreaming of, though I am quite conflicted about which bin to toss the unrelated electronics into.
