1. All I did was shop for 1TB, and my wallet threw an error first
I want a 1TB external SSD that plugs into my M2 Mac over USB.
On paper it's easy. USB-C, 1TB, and ideally read speeds around 1,000MB/s. But when I went through the price comparisons for summer 2026, 1TB external SSDs in the USB 10Gbps class landed on the "cheap side" at the low 20,000s of yen.
There's only one reaction to that.
That's so expensive!!!
I remember 1TB NVMe SSDs (the fast internal kind) going on sale for around 6,000 yen a few years ago, and now 20,000-something is a "good deal." Same unit of price, completely different universe.
The main question of this article is simple.
Is a 1TB SSD really too expensive in 2026? How have prices moved over the last five years, and should M2 Mac owners buy now or wait?
Short answer: yes, it's expensive, and you're not imagining it. But comparing a bargain-bin internal NVMe drive from 2023 directly with a finished external SSD in 2026 exaggerates the jump. Even when you separate the product types, you can still see the whole SSD market heading up from late 2025 into 2026.
2. Looking at five years of street prices, 2023 was abnormally cheap
This isn't a clean index tracking one model for five years. It's a lineup of snapshots, mostly from shop surveys in Akihabara (Tokyo's electronics district), showing how low 1TB-class drives got in each period.
| Period | Typical street-price snapshot for 1TB-class SSDs | Mood |
|---|---|---|
| July 2021 | NVMe 960-1,024GB: lowest 10,799 yen, average 13,044 yen | Heading toward 10,000 yen |
| December 2021 | NVMe: lowest 8,900 yen, average 9,468 yen | Under 10,000 yen looks normal |
| September 2022 | NVMe: lowest 8,980 yen | Around 9,000 yen |
| March 2023 | NVMe 1TB: sale price 5,980 yen | Price-collapse festival |
| May-August 2024 | Fast 1TB at 9,780 yen; budget drives at 6,980-9,680 yen in some examples | Still cheap |
| August 2025 | NVMe 1TB at 9,680 yen, SATA 960GB at 6,500 yen | Still around 10,000 yen |
| December 2025 | Some SATA 1TB drives rise to 12,870-12,980 yen | The wind changes |
| Summer 2026 | USB 10Gbps external 1TB in Japan at the low 20,000s of yen; street prices for internal 1TB SSDs worldwide are also high | State of emergency for wallets |
In the 2021 Akihabara survey, 1TB-class NVMe averaged about 13,000 yen, then fell to an average of 9,468 yen by year-end. In September 2022 the lowest price was still 8,980 yen.
Then in March 2023, NVMe 1TB hit 5,980 yen, reported as the lowest price ever at the time of the survey.
That's the moment that wrecks your memory.
Once you've seen "1TB = 6,000 yen," even 10,000 yen looks pricey afterward. At 20,000 yen, the price-comparison site in your head goes off like a fire alarm.
In 2024 there was a 1TB drive with 7,000MB/s speeds on sale for 9,780 yen, and another survey listed the Intel 670p 1TB at 6,980 yen and the Crucial P3 Plus 1TB at 9,680 yen, among others.
In August 2025 there were still NVMe 1TB drives at 9,680 yen and SATA 960GB drives at 6,500 yen. But by year-end the increases were obvious: the SanDisk SSD Plus 1TB at 12,870 yen, the Kingston A400 960GB at 12,980 yen, and so on.
So "it feels like it used to be cheaper" is pretty accurate.
3. But drawing one line from "5,980 yen in 2023" to "20,000-something in 2026" is sloppy
Let me sort this out once, properly.
The 5,980 yen in 2023 was a sale price on an internal M.2/NVMe drive. What I'm shopping for now is a finished external SSD that plugs straight into a Mac over USB-C.
An external drive isn't just the SSD itself. It also includes a USB bridge controller, an enclosure, a cable or a built-in connector, heat-dissipation design, and a warranty. The speed class is different too.
So claiming this is wrong:
2023: 5,980 yen → 2026: 21,800 yen → SSDs are 3.6 times pricier!
Still, there are reasons the 2026 price jump isn't an illusion. In TrendForce's street-price data for August 2026 (TrendForce is a market research firm), internal 1TB SSDs, from budget models up to the Samsung 990 PRO, show average prices of roughly 133 to 240 dollars.
On top of that, the contract price of value-focused 1TB SSDs sold to PC makers averaged 270.10 dollars in the second quarter of 2026, which is high.
Split the categories however you like, and it's still expensive.
4. What happened in 2026: AI is eating SSDs too
Blaming a single culprit is sloppy, but the biggest structural factor is demand from AI servers and data centers.
TrendForce forecasts that NAND flash contract prices will rise 10-15% in the third quarter of 2026 compared with the previous quarter. The demand is driven by AI inference and large data centers, and NAND makers are shifting supply toward high-margin enterprise SSDs.
In the latest announcement on September 1, the top five enterprise SSD vendors were said to have reached combined revenue of about 37.59 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2026, up 103.6% from the previous quarter. Not only higher shipments but also higher contract prices pushed revenue up.
In short:
AI: "Give me storage." Data centers: "Give me more." Manufacturers: "We'll favor whoever pays more." Regular people: "One 1TB, please." The shop: "That'll be 20,000 yen." Regular people: "Come down."
That's the whole story.
The AI boom doesn't stop at GPUs. It cuts across DRAM, NAND, and SSDs too. To build the future, the external SSD for my Mac gets pricier. The future, shipping cash on delivery.
5. So will prices keep rising? There are signs they're "stuck high" and stalling
It's not all bad news.
TrendForce expects NAND contract prices to rise again in the third quarter of 2026, but it also says consumer PCs and smartphones can no longer absorb the prices, so the pace of increases will slow.
A July market report likewise said that high prices and weak consumer demand were making buyers push back, slowing the increases and moving things closer to "stagnation at a high level."
And for NAND wafer contract prices in July, mainstream TLC and QLC (the two common types of flash memory) were roughly flat, caught between high prices and low demand, with very low trading volume.
So right now:
This is not the start of a crash. But we may be moving out of the "prices rise forever" phase and into the "too expensive, nobody's buying" phase.
When prices fall, first the increases stop, then inventory piles up, then manufacturers and retailers cut prices to clear stock. A few signs of that early stage have appeared.
However, the forecast for third-quarter 2026 contract prices is still positive, so there's no basis for waiting around for "half price next month!"
6. For an M2 Mac, what's the least wasteful thing to buy?
Apple officially states that the M2 MacBook Air's Thunderbolt / USB 4 ports support Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 at up to 40Gb/s, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 at up to 10Gb/s.
If you want an external SSD for everyday storage, photos, video, Git, and backups, a 1TB drive with USB 10Gbps and real-world speeds around 1,000MB/s is a very clear choice.
If you're going to pay for something faster, don't buy based on the numbers "20Gbps" or "40Gbps" alone. Check which connection mode your Mac and that product will actually use together.
For this purpose, these matter more than top speed:
- Connects directly over USB-C
- 1TB
- 10Gbps class
- Around 1,000MB/s
- Ordinary heat behavior and warranty
- The price is coming down
When SSD prices are high, there's no reason to pay extra for speed you won't use.
7. Buy now or wait?
If you need it right now
Buy it.
If your data won't fit, your internal SSD is always nearly full, or your work keeps stalling, this isn't the time to play the price-prediction game. At 2026 prices, a USB 10Gbps, 1TB, roughly 1,000MB/s drive counts as pretty decent if it gets down to around 20,000 yen.
If you're not in a hurry
Wait.
In 2026, NAND contract prices are high, and weak demand from consumers who can't stomach the prices is dragging the market. In a phase like this, short-lived lows from sales and inventory clearance may show up before regular prices collapse.
If I had to set my own waiting lines, they'd be:
- 20,000 yen or less: easy to buy at current prices
- 18,000 yen or less: a really strong deal
- 15,000 yen or less: finally I can say "prices came down"
- Around 10,000 yen: the ghost of 2023 can finally rest in peace
That's about it.
This isn't a market forecast. It's a buying rule based on past street prices and today's high prices.
8. If you're hunting for "pricing glitch" deals, fix the conditions, not the product name
If you search for sales with just "SSD 1TB cheap," SATA drives, slow USB drives, mystery brands, and fast Thunderbolt drives all get mixed together.
For an M2 Mac, it's better to lock your search conditions like this:
1TB / USB-C / USB 10Gbps / read speed 900-1,050MB/s / warranty confirmed in Japan
Then compare only on price.
That makes it easier to avoid a different kind of game: "cheap, but half the speed," "paid for the 20Gbps number and can't use it on my setup," or "extremely cheap but the seller looks shady."
Building your own from an NVMe drive plus a USB enclosure is another escape route, but in 2026 the NVMe drive inside is itself expensive. Once you add the enclosure, the gap with a finished product can be small, so compare the total.
9. Conclusion: SSDs are expensive in 2026, so right now the people who can wait have the upper hand
Looking back over five years: around 10,000 yen in 2021, around 9,000 yen in 2022, and in 2023 NVMe 1TB dropped to 5,980 yen. In the summers of 2024 and 2025, options around 10,000 yen were still normal.
Then the increases became noticeable at the end of 2025, and in 2026, with AI and data-center demand behind it, NAND and SSD prices are staying high.
So "a 1TB drive for over 20,000 yen? That's pricey" is a perfectly normal reaction.
But there's no evidence of an imminent crash, either. For the third quarter of 2026, a forecast of further NAND contract price increases still stands. On the other hand, there are also signs of a possible peak: consumers can't stand the prices, and TLC and QLC trading is nearly at a standstill.
If you need it, buy. If you're not in a hurry, wait.
And finally, one thing to say to the market:
Come down.
