WD_Black Xbox Series X|S Storage Expansion Card Hands-On

For several years, Seagate’s licensed Xbox Series Storage Expansion Cards were the only option to expand the storage of Microsoft’s current-gen consoles while being compatible with Xbox Velocity Architecture and maintaining Xbox Series X|S SSD performance. To offer players an alternative, Western Digital has now also launched its storage solution for Xbox Series consoles – the WD_Black C50 Storage Expansion cards.

Of course, Xbox Series owners are able to add additional storage to their consoles using external SSDs, but they are generally a few seconds slower when it comes to loading compared to the internal SSD storage of the Xbox Series consoles. Also, it should be noted that Xbox Series-optimized games can only be run from the internal SSD or through the storage expansion slot. In addition, using the dedicated storage expansion slot instead of using one of the USB ports can be considered a plus when using other peripherals. Seagate’s storage expansion solution for Xbox Series didn’t come cheap, although Seagate recently dropped the price of its cards.

So how does Western Digital’s memory expansion for Xbox perform and how does the price of these cards compare with Seagate’s storage solution? Let’s find out, shall we?

For this hands-on article, we tested boot times, loading times, and file transfer times of several Xbox Series-optimized games as well as older non-optimized games.  The purpose of testing the older non-optimized Xbox One titles was to see how the C50 Xbox Storage expansion compared to an external SSD attached to the Series X (we already tested out this external SSD some years ago).

First up are file transfer times from the external SSD to the WD_Black C50 Xbox storage expansion, the Xbox Series X internal storage as well internal storage to the WD_Black expansion card, and visa versa.

As you can see in the graph above, there’s only a minimal difference (up to 3-4 seconds) when transferring games from an external SSD to the WD_Black expansion and the Xbox Series X internal storage. The difference was the biggest with Ori and the Will of the Wisps, in favor of the Series X’s internal SSD.

When it comes to loading a game from the start screen within Forza Horizon 5 and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, the differences are similarly small. Loading Forza took 16 seconds when loading a save from the internal SSD – the same time as loading from the WD_Black storage expansion. When loading Ori, the internal SSD beat the WD_Black by roughly 4 seconds.

So how does the WD_Black C50 match up against the Xbox Series internal SSD when booting up the game from the Xbox Series home menu? The same as with loading a save game – a minimal difference in favor of the internal SSD. Loading Ori from the internal SSD took about 5.97 seconds, whereas the WD_Black needed 7 seconds to boot up the game. We can safely say that booting up Forza Horizon 5 was almost equally fast on both storage options (21.94 sec. vs 22 sec.)

Going by the numbers, Western Digital’s Xbox storage expansion card is a solid option when you’re in the market to expand your Xbox Series storage. When looking at boot, loading, and file transfer times, the difference is minimal to the point that regular players likely won’t even notice any difference.

When looking at pricing, the WD_Black C50 sells for roughly the same price as Seagate’s expansion cards although Wester Digital’s offering can often be found cheaper at various retailers. Then again, these officially-licensed expansion cards for Microsoft’s console are still vastly more expensive than a speedy external SSD. Then again, external SSDs are a bit slower overall and you won’t be able to play Xbox Series X|S optimized titles from them.

* test sample provided by the manufacturer