Are external HDDs fast enough for gaming on PS5 or Xbox?

Verified-purchase and community reviewers agree mechanical drives work well for storing and launching last-gen and Xbox games, and many PlayStation owners report the Seagate Portable runs trouble-free. However, mainstream press and r/XboxSeriesX threads note an HDD is only marginally faster than internal storage and cannot run current-gen games that require SSD speed, so it is best treated as overflow and archive storage.