WD Blue SN500 500GB SSD Review

Rating: 8.0.

WD's Blue SN500 is the first Blue labelled M.2 format drive to have an NVMe interface. It uses a combination of WD's own in-house controller and 64-layer 3D TLC NAND. Coming in at less than £70, is this drive the perfect upgrade from your old SATA SSD?

At launch there are just two available capacities in the SN500 range; 250GB and 500GB. Both drives have the same official Sequential read figure of up to 1,700MB/s with the 250GB drive being rated up to 1,300MB/s for Sequential writes and the 500GB drive a little higher at up to 1,450MB/s. Random performance for the 500GB drive is quoted as up to 275,000 IOPS for reads and up to 300,000 IOPS for writes while the 250GB drive is rated at up to 210,000 IOPS and 170,000 IOPS for reads and writes respectively.

Endurance for the 500GB drive is quoted at 300TBW and WD backs the drive with a 5-year warranty.

Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 500GB.
NAND Components: SanDisk 64-layer 3D TLC.
NAND Controller: WD NVMe.
Cache: none.
Interface: PCIe Gen 3 x2.
Form Factor: M.2 2280.
Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.3mm
Drive Weight: 6.5g

Firmware Version: 201000WD

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