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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
75 Comments
View All Comments
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
I'd pay the extra $6 for the 1TB 850 Evo, which preforms much better.vladx - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
I'd rather pay $50 less for the Sandisk X400 than to spend an addiitional $56 for some benchmark points that are hardly relevant to real world experienceTheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
in a heavily used system, those "extra points" can mean more then just a high score.vladx - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
For a heavily used system, you buy a Samsung 850 Pro or PCIe SSD.Impulses - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
The EVOs do go on sale somewhat often... I can see paying a premium for them either way, but I definitely wouldn't pay an extra large premium for the Pro, at that point you might as well go PCI-E/M.2 IMO... Unless it's a really fringe case where you need both the fastest+largest consumer drive available and price (or leaving performance on the table) isn't a concern.Bullwinkle J Moose - Saturday, October 15, 2016 - link
Extra large premium for the Pro???I require a minimum of 160GB for my Boot Drives in my test Rigs so I need 250 - 256GB SSD's minimum
Lets look at the Huge Premium at Newegg for the 256GB 850 Pro shall we
Oct 15 2016
850 EVO / 250GB $99.99 OUT OF STOCK
850 Pro / 256GB $123 IN STOCK
850 EVO warranty 3 years
850 Pro warranty 10 years
850 EVO TLC Nand
850 Pro MLC Nand (40nm process)
Firmware problems
850 EVO ???
850 Pro None
Would anyone here spend more than the difference in price between these 2 SSD's just for an extended warranty on an EVO?
The better buy is the Pro!
It also has much better compatability with various Operating Systems than PCIe / M.2 SSDs
I'm using mine for Windows XP / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 and Linux Mint
Try running any OS that is not a DRM Spyware Platform on your precious M.2 drive
Bullwinkle J Moose - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link
Apparently it was only the 840 EVO that had firmware problems so the 850 EVO firmware appears to be fine and neither the 850 EVO or Pro has burst into flames yetTheinsanegamerN - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link
Linux loves my 950 pro. So yeah.Magichands8 - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link
What a disappointment. Yet another low capacity, highly priced SSD permanently crippled by the SATA interface... just like all the other SSDs we've been presented with for years and years. Not touching this with a 10 foot pole.Lolimaster - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
Unless you edit videos, no one noticies the 2GB/s+ speeds unless for e-pen1s rights.