Compare Crucial T705 2TB and Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB: prices, speeds, $/TB. Which to buy in July 2026? Full spec breakdown.
Both run on Gen 5 hardware but at different capacities: 2 TB for the Crucial T705 2TB versus 4 TB for the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB. Whether the larger drive's $/TB advantage justifies the higher upfront cost depends on how much you actually need.
Hardware-wise, the Crucial T705 2TB runs on Phison's E26 silicon, which kicked off the consumer Gen 5 era and typically requires a heatsink. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB pairs Samsung's Piccolo controller — DRAM-less with PCIe 4.0/5.0 dual-mode support.
Price separates these two meaningfully. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB costs $146.25/TB versus $203.00/TB for the Crucial T705 2TB — a 28% premium that needs justification in real benchmarks, not just spec-sheet bragging.
On sequential reads the Crucial T705 2TB pulls ahead by 7,250 MB/s (14,500 MB/s versus 7,250 MB/s). That matters for moving large files but rarely shows up in game loads.
Write speeds skew toward the Crucial T705 2TB: 12,700 MB/s sustained against 6,300 MB/s. Content creators feel this; gamers do not.
The Crucial T705 2TB carries a dedicated DRAM chip for FTL (Flash Translation Layer) mapping; the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB relies on HMB (Host Memory Buffer), borrowing 64 MB from system RAM. The practical gap shows up only under sustained random write loads.
Endurance leans toward the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB at 2,400 TBW (versus 1,200 TBW for the Crucial T705 2TB). For most consumers this never becomes a real concern — 600 TBW lasts a decade of normal writes — but heavy daily writers should weight it.
Heading to a PlayStation 5? Both drives drop into the console's M.2 bay and report identical real-world benchmarks since the PS5 caps storage at PCIe 4.0 speeds. The Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB wins this matchup on $/TB. Video editors will gravitate toward the Crucial T705 2TB for its write headroom (12,700 MB/s sustained). Project saves and proxies move faster, which compounds across a workday. Heads-up — these are full-length 2280 drives. Steam Deck and most current handhelds require shorter 2230 modules, so check capacity-specific 2230 variants if that's your target platform.
Market context: the Crucial T705 2TB ranks #8 of 11 Gen 5 2 TB drives we track by $/TB, while the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB ranks #1 of 6 Gen 5 4 TB drives. That puts at least one of them near the top of the value table — a reasonable head-to-head to be choosing from.
Pick the Crucial T705 2TB if you value the lower retail price ($406 vs $585), meaningfully faster reads (14,500 MB/s), higher sustained writes (12,700 MB/s), and a dedicated DRAM cache chip. Crucial's T-series tends to undercut Samsung and WD on price while using comparable Micron silicon — a value play hiding in a flagship form factor.
Pick the Samsung 990 EVO Plus 4TB if you value better $/TB economics ($146.25/TB), and a higher TBW endurance rating (2,400 TBW). The 990 EVO Plus uniquely supports both PCIe 4.0 x4 and PCIe 5.0 x2 modes — useful flexibility if you might upgrade motherboard generations.