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 - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here.
The WD Blue is tied with the OCZ Trion 150 for average data rate on the Heavy test, where the SanDisk X400 had a substantial advantage that put it close to MLC drives.
As with The Destroyer, the WD Blue only has slightly higher average latency than the X400 and is not as slow as the Trion 150. Additionally, the average latency on a full drive beats competitors like the OCZ VX500 and Crucial MX300 that suffer disproportionately when their SLC caches are exhausted.
The number of high-latency outliers makes it obvious that the WD Blue is a TLC drive, but also makes it clear that the drive degrades gracefully under a heavier load rather than falling apart.
The WD Blue is slightly more power efficient on the Heavy test than the X400, and both drives have better than average power consumption.
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Arbie - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I agree with another comment. Why is the Mushkin Reactor 1TB not in the charts for recent SSD reviews? At $230 it's cheaper than many, is MLC, and overall seems like a great buy. You reviewed it but then seem to have forgotten it.DanNeely - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I'm a bit puzzled by the performance consistency numbers here. In them the WD Blue 1TB seems to be consistently faster than the Sandisk X400 1TB before reaching steady state and about the same speed once it hits that point; but in almost all the other benches the Sandisk scores higher.Billy Tallis - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
The drive is completely filled once before the random write consistency test, which runs at QD32. Most of the other IOmeter scores are averages of low queue depths, and the random write test on page 6 is limited to a 16GB test file on an otherwise empty drive. Whatever effect caused the WD Blue to have lower peak performance is more significant for the shorter test, while for the consistency test the fact that the WD Blue has more spare area to start with than the X400 is a bigger factor.kmmatney - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I bought a SanDisk Ultra II 960GB drive about a year ago for around $200, and it's still close to that price ($219 at the moment). It's the one with SLC cache - I use it in my everyday work computer, as my OS drive, and I typically run 1-2 virtual machines as well. So I push it fairly hard for a consumer SSD, and it still runs great - no complaints at all, and I'd recommend it for the price.Michael Bay - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link
Same experience here. In a few weeks it will be a year of use for me, and if Sandisk utility is to be trusted, it`s only 1% worn.mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link
It's a pity the X300 is not available anymore, it had very good consistency and at one point was cheaper than many budget models.Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
It is amazing that they fit all that on one side of the board without so much as a capacitor on the back...LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
Sorry, I refuse to buy a SSD that uses TLC planar NAND.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
why? these have higher write endurance then some MLC drives.MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
That was quick - WD releasing an SSD under their own name. Sure it is a warmed over X400, but as the performance numbers indicate they didn't just slap a sticker on it... which leads to my next comment.When I read the opening of the article I was pretty excited. X400 with a bit more overprovisioning. I was expecting to see extra performance (even if only a little) along with the endurance. I guess not. Oh well.