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