The Western Digital Blue (1TB) SSD Review: WD Returns to SSDs
by Billy Tallis on October 11, 2016 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Storage
- Western Digital
- SanDisk
AnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage and unlike our Iometer tests, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, a few data points about its latency, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The WD Blue fails to keep up with the competition on The Destroyer, trailing behind everything except the Crucial BX200. Where the SanDisk X400 was one of the fastest TLC SSDs, the WD Blue is merely acceptable.
The average service time of the WD Blue is only slightly worse than the SanDisk X400, and still clearly better than the OCZ Trion 150. This suggests that the WD Blue's lower average data rate is due to it being uniformly a bit slower, and that it isn't experiencing any severe stalling.
The WD Blue does not suffer from any more high-latency outliers than other TLC drives at the 100ms threshold, but at the 10ms threshold it is worse than average where the X400 exceeded expectations.
The WD Blue thankfully shows no regression in power efficiency and falls in the second tier of drives with energy usage, on par with the SanDisk X400.
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HollyDOL - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
Indeed, all those companies had hiccups, but out of those two long term RMAing rate at friend's computer shop for Seagate is almost double of WD's (like... it was 9% of sold WD and 18% of sold Seagates, numbers being example, not actual ones).Then againt, it's 7 weeks since I had WD Red failure & RMAing.
so... backup, backup, backup and then again backup...
mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link
Never ceases to amaze me the number of business users I come across that have no backup of any of their systems or data at all.jamyryals - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Wow, I didn't realize the 1TB prices had come down so much. Pretty awesomeImpulses - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
Prices haven't budged much in over a year, I paid $300-ish (ea.) for 2x 1TB EVOs back around the Skylake launch, well over a year ago... The X400 was already cheaper at the time, but I was fine with the slight premium for the faster EVO. WD is basically launching an average to sub average drive at nearly the price point that an EVO has held for 12+ months...mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link
In some cases they've gone way up. The 850 EVO was pretty cheap in Jan/16, since when it's skyrocketed.Jad77 - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Lets hope the Black drives, when they make an appearance, are NVMe - in U.2 and M.2 form factors.plopke - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I would say my experience with WD is about 3/5 and sandisk 4/5 and I mean the complete picture product quality,product description,price,support,drivers,firmware,....Curious how this take over will go , how they will use sandisk brand name and knowledge. I fear it will become a typical , safe cost because of the purchase , dropped support for products , confused technical support people ,.... but I can always hope.
cknobman - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I think you have a typo in your charts, the 1TB drive is showing $299.Other outlets are listing it as $199.
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I just double-checked with WD and it's definitely $299. If anyone has it listed at $199, then that would seem to be in error.cknobman - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Yep you are correct. Thanks!Now I'm sad, deep down I knew $199 was too good to be true :(