Not all Cyber Monday deals are built equally - and we often get a hint that some might be worse than others months in advance. Back in October Amazon held its Big Deal Days event, marking the second Prime-exclusive sale of the year. As always, it sparked loads of other retailers to join in the fun and do a dress rehearsal for Cyber Monday, and while scouring the shelves, I noticed that Xbox gamers weren't getting the best value for money they could.
If you play on Xbox Series X or S, you have two options if you want to expand your internal storage. On one side, you have the popular, and well-known Official Seagate Expansion Card, and then you have the WD Black C50 - which only launched earlier in 2023.
While the Seagate option is usually the one most people flock to when it comes to these big deal events, the WD Black C50 is often the cheaper of the two. Right now, in a Cyber Monday Xbox deal for example, you can get the 1TB WD Black C50 for only $124.98, whereas a 1TB Seagate Expansion Card will set you back $129.99 - and that's if you can find stock of it.
The differences in price here aren't exactly massive, but it's worth knowing that these two storage devices are functionally the exact same. They're both an extension of the console's internal storage, meaning they slot in the back of your Series S or X, and can both launch your games in a heartbeat. Out of all the best Xbox Series X hard drive options out there, these are the only two that Quick Resume will work with. In other words, these are as close as you'll get to an internal NVMe SSD for the PS5.
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Cyber Monday is all about making your money go further, so I wouldn't be doing my job right if I didn't tell you that there's absolutely no need to fork out more money on the Seagate Expansion Card when WD Black's option is far easier to get stock of and is a bit more affordable.
The only caveat has to be that if you need more than 1TB, Seagate is your only option. For some reason, the C50 doesn't come in a 2TB form. The bad news is that Seagate's 2TB expansion almost knows that it has a monopoly in that department, and it doesn't come cheap.
As someone who reviews the best SSDs for gaming and the best external hard drives for gaming, charging $229.99 for 2TB of this Xbox-specific storage seems absolutely sinful to me. That's literally $100 more for 1 extra terabyte, which, let's be completely honest, no one really needs. It's amazing how 1TB extra can turn you into a game-hoarding dragon that never deletes anything, but filling up just one extra terabyte can actually be a struggle.
To me, there's no real reason to buy the 2TB version of the Seagate Expansion Card, especially when, if you actually need that space, you can always grab a Cyber Monday external hard drive deal instead.
Cyber Monday gaming deals are ongoing, and there are loads to be had. If you fancy grabbing a controller for your Xbox Series X or S, check out the widget below.
Today's best Cyber Monday deals that are still available
- Chairs: GTPlayer, Lacoo, and The Crew from $38.97 at Walmart
- Controllers: Xbox Elite Series 2 now just $124 at Amazon
- Desks: up to $150 off Arozzi Arena, Eureka Ergonomic and more at Amazon
- Gaming laptops: Razer Blade laptops up to $600 off at Best Buy
- Keyboards: HyperX, Corsair, and Logitech decks from $39.99 at Best Buy
- PCs: RTX 40-Series Alienware rigs from $1,299.99 at Dell
- PS5: up to $30 off Sackboy, Spider-Man, Call of Duty and more at Amazon
- Meta Quest: Asgard's Wrath Quest 3 bundles available at Best Buy
- Mice: Razer, Logitech and more now starting at $23 at Amazon
- Monitors: high refresh rate monitors for under $100 at Walmart
- Nintendo Switch: Mario Kart bundles now available at Amazon
- Xbox Series X: bundles now live at Amazon
Looking for more storage tips? Check out the best Cyber Monday SSD deals and Cyber Monday PS5 SSD deals. For more Xbox deals, look at Cyber Monday Xbox deals.
