WD Blue SN570 1TB SSD Review

WD has been busy of late. First we had the latest addition to the NAS-focussed Red product line, in the shape of the SN700, and now we have the newest member of the mainstream Blue family, the SN570.

The third generation WD Blue SN570 takes over from the SN550 as being the fastest Blue drive currently available. The new drive uses an in-house WD controller and 3D TLC NAND, but WD is keeping details of both very close to their chest – but it seems reasonable to surmise that the NAND used by the drive is the latest 112-layer BiCS5 flash especially given the performance advantage the SN570 has over the SN550.

As with the SN550 line-up at launch, at the time of writing the SN570 product line consists of just three capacities; 250GB, 500GB and 1TB (the drive we are looking at here).

Official Sequential ratings for the 1TB drive are up to 3,500MB/s for reads with writes at up to 3,000MB/s. Those figures are 1,100MB/s and 1,050MB/s faster for read and writes respectively than the previous 1TB SN550. When benchmarked with the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite hit the official maximum, the drive producing a figure of 3,380MB/s… but we could confirm the official write figure with a test result of 3,050MB/s. However, with CrystalDiskMark we could confirm both figures.

When it comes to 4K random performance WD quote figures of up to 460,000 IOPS and up to 450,000 IOPS for read and writes respectively. As with the Sequential performance, these are a marked improvement over the 1TB SN550's figures of up 345,000 IOPS for reads and up to 385,000 IOPS for writes. With our standard 4-threaded tests we saw a best of 358,931 IOPS (QD32) for reads and 265,743 IOPS for writes at QD16. However, using the Peak Performance profile in CrystalDiskMark 8 we could confirm the official read figure with a test result of 466,033 IOPS, but it still came up a little shy of the official maximum write figure at 444,940 IOPS.

Although the performance of the SN570 shows a big improvement over the SN550, the SN570's endurance is rated the same as the older drive; 600TBW for the 1TB model, 300TBW for the 500GB and 150TBW for the entry 250GB drive.

The 1TB Blue SN570 we reviewed today is priced at £91.99 direct from WD HERE.

Pros

• Overall performance.
• 5-year warranty.

Cons

• Couldn’t match the official maximum 4K random write figures with some of our testing.

KitGuru says: WD’s SN570 Blue shows a marked increase in performance over the previous Blue SN550 thanks to the NAND technology it uses and controller updates, while WD has given it every chance with a pretty competitive price tag.

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