Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G vs. Rocket 4 Plus Review: A Pair of Speedy PCIe 4.0 SSDs

I’m new to the Sabrent brand, and the Rocket 4 Plus and Plus-G are excellent first impressions. They are both Sabrent’s latest and top-tier PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, leased just a few months apart in 2022.

The two are essentially the same drive, with some minor differences. In fact, the two are so similar that I decided to review them both in this matchup.

Both drives are not for the budget-minded, though they are not as expensive as those from Samsung or WD. The Rocket 4 Plus’s pricing starts at $89.99. On the other hand, the 1TB Rocket 4 Plus-G is the most expensive—in terms of cost per Gigabyte—that starts at $169.99.

Here’s the bottom line: Both the Rocket 4 Plus and Plus-G are excellent buys, worthy of their costs. If you are a PC gamer, the Rocket 4 Plus-G will give you a little extra relatively soon.

That said, keep an eye out for them during upcoming holiday sales.

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G vs. Rocket 4 Plus: Top-tier NVMe SSDs

The two SSDs are very similar.

They are standard NVMe 2280 drives designed to fit in an M.2 slot. Both are double-sided, so they are a tad thicker than all other single-sided PCIe 4.0 drives I’ve tested.

The way the interface works, all PCIe 4.0 drives will work with the older PCIe 3.0 standard and the upcoming PCIe 5.0.

The only significant difference between the two is that the Rocket 4 Plus-G uses Sabrent’s “state-of-the-art O₂ GO firmware” specifically designed to take advantage of Microsoft’s new DirectStorage API, an application programming interface designed to boost the storage performance of a Windows computer.

As a result, the Rocket 4 Plus-G is better suited for a (gaming) PC than a console. And in my real-world and synthetic testing, it did prove to be faster by a small margin.

In any case, the support for DirectStorage is more of a future-proofing matter since you have to wait till January 2023 for the first game that supports it.

Other than that, the Rocket 4 Plus is available in capacity ranging from 500GB to 8TB, whereas the Plus-G caps at 4TB. Their general specifications are in the hardware specification table below.

Hardware specifications: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G vs. Rocket 4 Plus:

Sabrent doesn’t offer much information about its SSDs, but these SSDs use a controller from Phison, and Micron NAND flash.

Sabrent only put these together to create the final products. That’s a normal practice for many OEM hardware vendors.

Name	Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G	Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus
Capacity	4TB, 2TB, 1TB	8TB, 4TB, 2TB, 1TB, 500GB
Form Factors	M.2 2280
Weight (non-heatsink)	.2 oz (5.7 g)
Interface	PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4 PCIe Gen 3 and Gen 2 compatible
Controller	Phison PS5018-E18
NAND Flash	Micron 176-Layer TLC	500GB – 4TB: Micron 176-Layer TLC 8TB: BiCS 5 112L TLC
Endurance  (Terabytes Written)	4TB: 2400 TBW 2TB: 1400 TBW 1TB: 700 TBW	8TB: 5,600TBW 4TB: 3,000 TBW 2TB: 1,400 TBW 1TB: 700 TBW 500GB: 350 TBW
Sequential Read (up to)	7,200MB/s
Microsoft DirectStorage API support	Yes	No
Hardware Encryption	No
Warranty	2-year, or 5-year with registration
US Price (at review)	1GB: $169.99 2GB: $299.99 4GB: $699.99 Buy now!	500GB: $89.99 1TB: $149.99 2TB: $299.99 4TB: $699.99 8TB: $1499.99 Buy now!

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G vs. Rocket 4 Plus: Frill-free SSDs with better-then-stand standard endurance

The Rocket 4 Plus and Plus-G share the same endurance rating in the 1TB and 2TB capacities.

At .7 drive writes per day (DWPD), both are .1DWPD more than other PCIe 4.0 SSDs I’ve reviewed, such as those from WD or Samsung. To put things in perspective, if you write 700GB of data per day and every day to the 1GB versions, that will take you five years to wear them out.

The 4TB and 8TB capacities of the Rocket 4 Plus have even slightly higher endurance ratings.

Chances are you will never be able to wear out these drives in daily usage, but a higher endurance rating is always better.

Registration is required for a 5-year warranty

Both the Rocket 4 Plus and Rocket 4 Plus-G include a 5-year warranty. However, you need to register the drives with the vendor within 90 days of purchase.

With no registrations, each only enjoys a much shorter 2-year warranty.

Product registration means you have to surrender your personal information to the vendors and, among other things, are subject to getting marketing materials. (Here’s Sabrent’s Privacy Policy.)

Handy dashboard utility, useful backup software, and no features or hardware encryption.

The Rocket 4 drives share the same Sabrent dashboard software that enables users to monitor their status, update firmware, perform speed tests, and a few other tools.

Both drives are frill-free and don’t come with user-accessible features such as overprovisioning of any Samsung counterpart or speed-boosting techniques such as Game Mode of the WD SN850x. But simplicity can be a good thing.

But they included a Sabrent-branded Acronis True Image backup and drive cloning software, which worked well in my trial.

Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G vs. Rocket 4 Plus: Detail photos

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Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G vs. Rocket 4 Plus: Excellent performance

For this review, I used both drives for over a week and was impressed with their performances. Since this is my first experience with Sabrent, I’ll keep using them and update this review if I encounter any issues.

In terms of performance, both drives were among the best performers compared to other PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs. And they work very well on a computer with the older PCIe 3.0.

While the Rocket 4 Plus-G showed better performance in synthetic random access performance and even in sustained copy tests, in real-world usage, I couldn’t find any difference between the two.

In fact, they delivered the same experience as the Samsung 980 Pro, Samsung 990 Pro, or the WD SN850X.

I purposely used both drives on the same computer, using the same systems—cloned from the same image. I switched back and forth, using the same tasks and playing the same games, and I could never tell which drive I was using.

So it’s safe to say these are the same drive from the users’ perspective.

Both drives ran equally warm in my trial—the same level as any other PCIe 4.0 SSDs. They are cool enough to be used as is, but you can also get a separate add-on heatsink to keep them cool. In this case, you need a large motherboard since the accessory is quite large.

Conclusion

Sabrent’s Rocket 4 Plus and Rocket 4 Plus-G are both excellent in their own way.

The former is available in all capacities you’d look for, and the latter has unique support for Microsoft’s new DirectStorage API. Most importantly, the two share very similar top-notch real-world performance.

If you’re in the market for top SSD performers, I’d recommend either. Keep an eye out for deals on them this holiday season. You won’t be disappointed.