Oliver Haslam·

Sony Is Finally Letting People Use M.2 SSD Slot – But Only In Beta

Sony is now testing a new beta of the PS5’s system software that enables support for the M.2 SSD expansion slot all PS5 consoles ship with. So far, that slot has been useless — but that’s set to change.

The beta program is starting to roll out today, according to a report by The Verge, with those in the US, Canada, Japan, UK, Germany, and France potentially in luck.

Sony says that you’ll need an M.2 SSD that’s PCIe Gen4-compliant and has read speeds of 5,500MB/s or faster. But that isn’t all, because Sony also says that you need to worry about heat, too.

“Using an M.2 SSD with your PS5 console requires effective heat dissipation with a cooling structure, such as a heatsink,” explains Sony. “You can attach one to your M.2 SSD yourself, either in a single-sided format, or double-sided format.” That’s less than ideal, but we’ll have to wait for people to install the beta and test this out before we learn just how hot these things are going to get.

There are other changes afoot, too. The latest PS5 beta includes 3D audio support for TV speakers while PS4 and PS5 games will also now appear separately in the home screen and game library, Each game will also make it clear what platform it’s from in its title, too.

While this is still in beta, it’s a good sign that Sony is at least confident enough to let people outside its offices use the new features. That SSD support is the biggest improvement that we’re all waiting for though — let’s hope it fixes the storage capacity problems we’ve all been plagued with since launch.

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