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 - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here.
The WD Blue's average data rate on the Light test is surprisingly slow and barely faster than the Crucial BX200. It appears that the WD Blue cannot deliver very fast burst performance even though it performs reasonably well under a sustained load.
While the WD Blue only barely beat the Crucial BX200 on average data rate, it clearly wins on average service time. The WD Blue's empty drive average latency is substantially higher than most of the competition, but its full drive performance stands out less.
The number of high-latency outliers experienced by the WD Blue on the Light test is much higher than most of the competition, but also less than half what the Crucial BX200 suffered.
Power consumption is once again a highlight of the WD Blue, with above average performance that is slightly better than the SanDisk X400.
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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.