[2020/07/02: added Samsung and WD 1TB M.2 2230 drives]

Now you can upgrade your Surface Laptop 3 or your Surface Pro X to a 1TB SSD for ~$220! Save yourself over $500 compared to Microsoft’s list price for 1TB models.

The trick is to get your hands on a speedy M.2 NVMe 2230 SSD module. As of March 2020, the recently launched Toshiba Kioxia BG4 is the fastest available SSD in this form factor. While it does not have a DRAM cache on-board like desktop-class SSDs, it implements NVMe v1.2 host memory buffering which results in great performance at its price point. Unfortunately, it is only available in bulk orders to OEMs and is not readily available to consumers.

But…

The Tuff Nano external 1TB drive by Caldigit has this SSD inside and is only $220 as of March 2020 – far less than the ~$700 USD Microsoft charges on its high-end models. Another option is to order the bare drive part number W98K4 (#400-BFVW) from Dell for a few dollars less. Customers in the EU can order from CentralPoint or various firms listed at Geizhals.

Alternate 1TB M.2 2230 models are:

If ~$220 is too much to spend on an upgrade, there are several broadly available 512GB drives for about half the price:

In my opinion, it is not worthwhile upgrading from 128GB -> 256GB given how little you save compared to a 512GB drive. So I haven’t bothered to list 256GB models here.

The process:

Disclaimer: This will likely void the warranty of both the Tuff Nano and your Surface Device.