Today Western Digital (WD) is releasing their first mid-range NVMe drive. We previously covered the announcement for the second generation of their high-end Black line NVMe SSDs due out in April. The first gen of their high-end NVMe's are available now, so its no surprise WD is transitioning their mid-range Blue line of drives to NVMe. With the industry-wide adoption of NVMe having been anticipated for some time, we expect to see their Green line make the jump sooner rather than later, although we've not yet heard anything suggesting an exact timeline for that.
Today Western Digital (WD) is releasing their first mid-range NVMe drive. We previously covered the announcement for the second generation of their high-end Black line NVMe SSDs due out in April. The first gen of their high-end NVMe's are available now, so its no surprise WD is transitioning their mid-range Blue line of drives to NVMe. With the industry-wide adoption of NVMe having been anticipated for some time, we expect to see their Green line make the jump sooner rather than later, although we've not yet heard anything suggesting an exact timeline for that.
Over the years WD has gone through several naming schemes, but their Blue line has consistently been a reliable workhorse sitting in the middle ground between the high-end performance of their Black drives and economy drives. The new Blue SN500 looks to continue that tradition supporting half the sequential reads of the Black line (1,700 MB/s vs. 3,470 MB/s), but also at only a little over half the price ($77.99 vs. $149.99 for the 500MB models). That's still more than three times as fast as the previous SATA Blue models. The write speed ratios are similar although a little more in favor of the BLUE SN500 which WD is reporting can manage 1,450MB/s of sequential writes. Blazing fast for anyone used to the speeds of SATA SSDs. In addition to the 500GB model there is also a 250GB model, both in the tiny 80mm x 22mm x 2.38mm M.2 form factor. WD lists the average active power at 75mW but does not break it by model. This is significantly less than the 110mW drawn by the high-end Black models, but a good 30% more than the old Blue SATA drives with the same capacity.
Availability
WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will be available in 250GB and 500GB capacities at (MSRP) in the U.S. of $54.99 USD for 250GB (model number: WDS250G1B0C) and $77.99 USD for 500GB (model number: WDS500G1B0C).
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