WD Blue And SanDisk Ultra 3D SSD Review: Fast, Affordable Solid State Storage

Name: WD Blue SSD
Brand: WD

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, September 06, 2017, 12:15 PM EDT

Performance Summary: The new WD Blue and SanDisk Ultra 3D solid state drives offered competitive performance throughout testing. The drives stood out in the ATTO and CrystalDiskMark tests, where they put up some of the best sequential read and write transfers we have seen from a SATA SSD to date. Random 4K transfers were competitive with some of the top SATA SSDs currently available as well, though they trailed the popular Samsung SSD 850 EVO.

WD Blue 3D Series SSDs - Find Them At Amazon

Like many of the recently released SATA-based solid state drives, the WD Blue with 3D NAND and SanDisk Ultra 3D are bumping into the limitations of the SATA interface. With that said, the drives still represent a massive upgrade over traditional spinning hard drives in virtually every area – access times, sequential transfers, random 4K transfers, you name it. They’re more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives, but that’s par for the course and will remain true for all SSDs, for quite some time.

SanDisk Ultra 3D SSDs - Find Them At Amazon

WD, however, is aggressively pricing these drives. Despite their strong performance, the new WD Blue and SanDisk Ultra 3D drives can be found for about $0.28 - $0.31 per gigabyte, or $284 - $309 for a 1TB drive. That’s about 8 – 10% lower than the Samsung SSD 850 EVO.

Ultimately, there’s a lot to like about the WD Blue and SanDisk Ultra 3D SSDs. They offer competitive performance across the board at aggressive price points. If you’re shopping for a SATA SSD for a system upgrade or new build, the new WD Blue with 3D NAND and SanDisk Ultra 3D drives should absolutely be on your short list of considerations.


Aggressive Pricing Strong Sequential Performance Competitive Performance Overall	"Only" SATA Trails SSD 850 EVO In Some Tests

Tags: SSD, Storage, Sandisk, SATA, WD, 3d nand

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com