WD Blue SN500 NVME SSD Review
This is the WD SN500 – their “blue” NVME SSD. For those of you so familiar with WD’s naming scheme, it goes like this. “Black” is their highest performing drive in that category, so their Black SN750 SSD I reviewed a few months ago is a good bit faster than this, their “Blue” drive. They’ve also got “Green” which is their most “economical” option, but we aren’t interested in that today.
So, what does WD think they can bring to the SSD market, when the kings of this realm, Samsung, are sitting pretty at the top. Well, mostly an incredible value. This drive, the 500GB version, is selling for around £67. Yes, an NVME, 500GB SSD for £67. That nuts. Samsung’s 970 EVO in the same capacity sells for around £100.
Now, the SN500 isn’t the fastest NVME drive in the world, far from it infact. The 500GB model, as opposed to the only other option, the 250GB, peaks at only 1,700MB/s (1.7GB/s) reads and 1,450MB/s (1.45GB/s) writes, which is near on half the speed of the 970 – at least on reads anyway.
Now that’s not to say it’s slow, this is still a perfect choice for the gamer who wants a good M.2 SSD for their new build, a good amount of space and doesn’t want to break the bank. In my “real world” test, stressing both reads and writes simultaneously, it performed fairly well, averaging around 700MB/s, but more importantly, not dropping off over time.
Endurance wise it’s pretty good too, boasting 300TBW and a 5 year warranty, matching that of the Samsung drives. And temps wise I had this under a fairly large heatsink so kept really very cool around 35°c, and even without the heatsink I don’t think you’ll have any problems with temps on this one.
What surprised me most about this one is the size and connector. It’s an M.2, 2280 drive like most others, but it uses the “B+M” key style that is normally reserved for SATA based drives. Comparing that to a more normal NVME drive like the ADATA SX 8200, you can see the more normal “M” key. Also, there is just a single memory chip on here, from SanDisk as you’d expect, and a controller, also a SanDisk unit, and that’s it. You – in theory anyway – could lop off the back 60% of the drive and not lose any components. That’s kinda nuts.
Anyway, for such little money, comparatively anyway, this is a no brainer. Unless you want the better performance of the Black model, or the ADATA SX8200, or Samsung 970 Pros, this value proposition is really second to none and gets a stellar recommendation from me. Would I put this in my rig? Definitely, and I don’t know that I’d have to think twice about it.
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