WD Red SN700 1TB NVMe SSD Review

Rating: 8.0.

WD's latest SSD family is the SN700, the first NVMe drives to carry WD's Red label.  The SN700 has been designed and built from the ground up to work as a cache/storage drive to tackle demanding 24/7 NAS workload environments.

The SN700 family is made up of, (at the time of writing), five capacities; 250GB, 500GB, 1TB (the drive WD supplied for this review), 2TB and the flagship 4TB drive. WD has kept details about the controller and the number of 3D TLC NAND layers very close to their chest.

Sequential read performance for the range is stated as up to 3,100MB/s for the 250GB model, 3,430MB/s for the 500GB and 1TB models and 3,400MB/s for the 2 and 4TB drives. The 250GB drive gets a Sequential write figure of up to 1,600MB/s, the 500GB drive 2,600MB/s, the 1TB drive 3,000MB/s, the 2TB is a little slower at 2,900MB/s and finally, the 4TB drive is rated at up to 3,100MB/s.

When it comes to random read performance, the 4TB drive is the fastest at up to 550,000 IOPS, next up is the 1TB drive at up to 515,000 IOPS, the 2TB drive is rated up to 480,000 IOPS, the 500GB drive, 420,000 IOPS and finally the 250GB drive at up to 220,000 IOPS. The 1TB drive has the fastest random write rating at 560,000 IOPS, next up is the 2TB drive (540,000 IOPS), then the flagship 4TB drive (520,000 IOPS) followed by the 500GB drive (380,000 IOPS) and the entry-level 250GB model, 180,000 IOPS.

WD quote an endurance figure for the 1TB drive of 2,000TBW and back the drive with a 5-year warranty.

Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 1TB.
NAND Components: 3D TLC NAND.
NAND Controller: WD in-house.
Cache: DDR4.
Interface: PCIe Gen3 x4.
Form Factor: 2280 M.2.
Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.3mm.
Drive Weight: 7.5g.

Firmware Version: 111130WD.

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