Western Digital Launches WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSDs Delivering Value-Packed Performance
With respect to performance, Western Digital says that the new WD Blue SN500 SSDs deliver sequential read and write speeds of up to 1700MB/sec and 1450MB/sec respectively. As for random read/write performance, these figures come in at 275K IOPS and 300K IOPS respectively.
According to Western Digital, this represents a 3x improvement compared to the SATA members of the WD Blue family. This performance is made possible by Western Digital’s in-house 3D NAND along with its custom firmware and SSD controller.
Of course, this performance can’t match what the best NVMe PCIe SSDs on the market – like the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, which pretty much doubles the above metrics across the board – but Western Digital is really playing up the value aspect. The WD Blue SN500 will be available in 250GB (WDS250G1B0C) and 500GB (WDS500G1B0C) capacities priced at a very competitive $54.99 and $77.99 respectively, although street pricing is likely to be even lower.
“Content transitioning from 4K and 8K means it’s a perfect time for video and photo editors, content creators, heavy data users, and PC enthusiasts to transition from SATA to NVMe,” said Eyal Bek, Marketing VP for Western Digital. “The WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will enable customers to build high-performance laptops and PCs with fast speeds and enough capacity in a reliable, rugged and slim form factor.”
The new WD Blue SN500 SSDs should be available from a number of online retailers shortly, and will come backed with a 5-year warranty.
