Side-by-side: Crucial T705 4TB ($749) vs Samsung 990 PRO 4TB ($389). $/TB winner, specs, real-world picks for May 2026.
This is a generational matchup at 4 TB: the older-gen drive offers proven reliability and better $/TB, while the newer-gen sibling brings raw bandwidth that most users never tap.
Hardware-wise, the Crucial T705 4TB runs on the Phison E26 — the first widely-deployed Gen 5 controller, capable but thermally demanding. The Samsung 990 PRO 4TB pairs the in-house Samsung Pascal — engineered specifically for the 990 PRO at 8nm.
Money matters here — $97.25/TB on the Samsung 990 PRO 4TB versus $187.25/TB on the Crucial T705 4TB. That's enough of a spread that for budget-conscious builders, the Samsung 990 PRO 4TB becomes the default unless reviews of your specific workload prefer the Crucial T705 4TB.
Read speeds favor the Crucial T705 4TB: 14,500 MB/s versus 7,450 MB/s for the Samsung 990 PRO 4TB, a 49% advantage. Sequential-heavy workloads notice; transactional workloads don't.
The Crucial T705 4TB writes about 46% faster (12,700 MB/s vs 6,900 MB/s). Whether that matters depends entirely on what you write to the drive — gameplay capture and large project saves benefit, browsing and gaming do not.
If this purchase is for a PS5 storage expansion, the comparison flattens — Sony's PCIe Gen 4 controller normalizes both Crucial T705 4TB and Samsung 990 PRO 4TB to roughly equal in-game load times. The cheaper drive is the smart pick. Comparing across generations always invites the same question: does the bandwidth gap convert into user-visible improvements? Honest answer for the Crucial T705 4TB vs Samsung 990 PRO 4TB pairing: only for sustained sequential reads of multi-GB files. Heavy write workloads — video editing, RAW photo libraries, backup operations — favor the Crucial T705 4TB's 12,700 MB/s sustained write speed. Both drives use the 2280 form factor, which is too long for Steam Deck or ROG Ally — you'd need a 2230 variant if either manufacturer offers one, or a dedicated handheld-format drive instead.
Go with the Crucial T705 4TB for meaningfully faster reads (14,500 MB/s), and higher sustained writes (12,700 MB/s). Crucial drives benefit from being a direct Micron product — the same NAND that powers competitors' drives, but at lower margins.
Go with the Samsung 990 PRO 4TB for the lower retail price ($389 vs $749), and better $/TB economics ($97.25/TB). Among consumer SSD makers, Samsung's PRO series consistently scores highest on long-term reliability surveys (Backblaze, Puget Systems Q1 2026 data).