“Happy Birthday, Kiddo” — Seagate’s Last of Us Part II Limited Edition Hard Drive Review

I absolutely loved The Last of Us Part II, as you can see in my review. The game sold over 4 million copies in its first seven days of release, making it the fastest-selling first-party PS4 exclusive ever. Sony and Naughty Dog celebrated this incredible release with a companion themed PlayStation 4, and partnered with Seagate to create a themed hard drive to go with it. Like we saw with Gears 5 (our review), or Cyberpunk 2077 (our review), the drive offered up slick visuals, solid speeds, and plenty of capacity. Let’s unbox it and take a closer look.

As we get closer to the holiday season, and more games like Ghost of Tsushima, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Marvel’s Avengers, Outriders, Cyberpunk 2077, and many others are on the horizon, we’ll need a little more legroom to hold all of it. There are a wealth of external drives out there, but few look as cool as Seagate’s newest external drives. Let’s dive into the performance and aesthetics of the limited edition drive for The Last of Us Part II.

Since these drives are plug and play, formatted and ready to go with a single button press, I’m going to focus on performance, looks, and price. As the limited edition drives are a rotational storage drive, it has a maximum speed of around 140MB/s, whereas SSDs can hit upwards of 550MB/s (Such as Seagate’s own Game Drive for Xbox – our review). Previously themed drives were priced at a premium, but this one for The Last of Us Part II drive retails for $89.99 (2TB) — just $10 over a standard drive of the same specs. Let’s fire up our hard drive testing systems and see where this one lands

As you can see, despite being a rotational storage medium, Seagate’s engineering is rock solid, delivering at or above the rated speeds across any file larger than 64 KB. Like we saw on the Gears 5, and the Cyberpunk 2077 drives, this one for The Last of Us Part II outperforms most mechanical drives which hit much closer to a real-world 90 MB/s write speed. What’s surprised me, however, is that this drive is actually faster than the other two. With Cyberpunk’s drive hitting 138MB/s read, and 128MB/s write speeds, I was surprised to see this one hitting 142MB/s and 130MB/s consistently. I ran the test five times to make sure, but yep — Seagate managed to squeeze an extra 4MB/s out of it. It’s not gonna set the world on fire, but it does demonstrate that Seagate isn’t just sitting on their hands.

Beyond synthetic testing, the aforementioned copy is a great example of real-world use. Grabbing 30GB of files and moving them to and from the drive produced solid results. Copying to the drive remained in the 130 MB/s ballpark throughout. Copying those same files back, it’s clear to see the cache in action, with a taper off back to around 140 MB/s once said cache was exhausted. Again, highly consistent — just like their previous drives.

There are times when you wonder if you are being heard when you write your reviews and mention a shortcoming. There are other times when you are absolutely sure you are being heard, and things just took a step in the right direction. I’ve complained about the completely insufficient one year warranty on previous drives. Well, Seagate heard us — this drive now comes with a three year warranty here in the United States. A step in the right direction.

Unfortunately, they did stumble on their way there. While the Gears 5 drive came with a nice black and white nylon braided cable, and the Cyberpunk 2077 drive came with a thematically-perfect braided blue cable, this one comes with a plain cable with no nylon jacket. The nylon jacket is a crucial part of keeping cables healthy, and it’s the direction that Seagate needs to take with a premium product like this. At least it’s a small stumble.

The Gears 5 case, as you can see in the unboxing video above, is a smooth case with a painted on theme. Cyberpunk 2077’s drive went all out with an etched and rough texture on the front, and a graffiti-like carved message on the back. It was loud, industrial, and very on-brand. With The Last of Us Part II being a more stealth-focused game, Seagate opted for a more subdued approach with this drive. Adorned by a deeply-etched fern with spread leaves like you might use for cover in the game, this drive sports a matching motif to that of the limited edition PlayStation 4. The back has a simple S logo for Seagate.

There is a phenomenon with these drives that can’t be ignored. The Gears 5 drive launched at $99.99, and the Cyberpunk 2077 drives dropped at $89.99. I already see the Gears 5 drive going for $400, and the Cyberpunk 2077 drive is headed north of $100 already. The Gears 4 drive is at $1199 at the time of this review. When I say “limited quantities”, I mean that these will be gone in the blink of an eye. The Last of Us Part II is the fastest selling first party game of all time, and I have no doubt that this drive will disappear in the blink of an eye. If you want one, now is the time.

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