Owners of the Steam Deck and Microsoft Surface who want more SSD storage than is typically offered (and at a lower cost) have a new, unexpected source: Framework, the repairable laptop company.
Recognizing the need for reputable vendors of smaller-size M.2 drives, the company decided to “additionally line item” to its typical Western Digital drive order. As a result, the company has begun selling a 2TB M.2 2230 drive for $300 in its stores in the United States and Canada. The drives are currently out of stock, but you can sign up to be notified when they become available again.
Nirav Patel, the founder and CEO of Framework, describes the move as “an intriguing opportunity to enable upgrades on another popular consumer electronics product: the Steam Deck.” Patel notes that “legitimate sources for larger capacity drives,” such as the 2TB SN740 2230 models from Western Digital that Framework will offer, can be difficult to find. Patel links to iFixit’s guides for upgrading the Steam Deck and Surface devices and asks Framework fans to let the company know if they know of any other ways the company can “help you with hard-to-find upgrades for other products.” We’ll assume “retail-price GPUs” isn’t important.
As we mentioned in an article about the increasing availability of teensy SSD drives, these drives aren’t cheap, but they offer significant savings over the prices of the big OEM vendors.
Buying from a well-known brand like Western Digital through Framework is also likely to be a better bet than buying from unknown vendors on eBay or other marketplaces. While these drives are not Framework-labeled and thus do not come with the company’s one-year warranty, they do come with a 30-day return policy and a broader range of support options. The warranty language in the Framework suggests that actual malfunction or failure response would be handled by Western Digital.
Upgrading the Surface Laptop Go 2 from a 128GB SSD to a 256GB SSD costs between $50 and $100 if purchased from Microsoft or another retailer, and larger drives aren’t available. Microsoft will charge $300 to upgrade the Surface Pro 9 from 256GB to 512GB storage and $600 to upgrade from 256GB to 1TB storage. The various price tiers of the Steam Deck include non-storage-related benefits, but upgrading from the base model’s 64GB of slow eMMC storage to a 256GB SSD still costs at least $130.