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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Magichands8 - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
That's funny you should say that since I've been noticing it for years. Every single time I move around large files to reorganize or back them up, in fact. But I'm sure that I'm the only non-video editing person on the planet who doesn't use his computer exclusively for reading and writing tiny text files and browsing the internet. I'm also sure that I'm the only who would have a problem paying a premium for very low capacity devices just so I could experience their limitations.Michael Bay - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link
Oy vey, nobody in the market cares for my special snowflake wants, it`s anudda shoah!mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link
You need more explosions in your posts. ;Dbeginner99 - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
It's cheap but not really excitingly cheap. Doesn't really beat the aged MX200 which also comes with MLC NAND which I deem superior to this TLC low-end crap. Only advantage this has over MX200 is price. Good for a cheapo game-drive maybe but would avoid as OS drive.Arnulf - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
Ewww, 15nm planar TLC along with WD branding.JimmiG - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
I remember the time when the 850 Evo was considered a "budget" SSD. Now it's almost a high-end SSD.haukionkannel - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
And the price of evo is still going up. Hopefully there will be stop to it eventually.Impulses - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link
It's not really going up, just plateau'ing hard, sales might be happening slightly less frequently lately, I dunno... I do remember seeing the 1TB under $300 a number of times but it's mostly been just over $300 for well over a year.I paid $320-ish for two back in July-August 2015 when they were first starting to get close to $300. It's still faster than the field and brand alone is probably sustaining their ability to charge a premium.
mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link
Maybe it depends on where you live, but the 850 EVO went up a lot where I am (UK). Back in Jan this year the 250GB was 53 UKP, now the same model is 85 UKP. Samsung is exploiting demand for what used to be a well priced, reliable product to give the model a premium image that's pushing its cost far above where it really should be. This has happened before, eg. when the 830 series shot up in early 2013 after strong demand, which helped ensure all other brands didn't lower their prices.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link
what HASNT shot up in price in the UK post-Brexit vote?