Western Digital recently has announced the addition of NVMe-based M.2 2280 solid state drive into the family of its Blue storage series in the form of WD Blue SN500. For those who not familiar with the company’s product series, Blue is meant for the mainstream market.
Prior to this, NVMe SSD was only offered by WD as part of the Black series which is designed for performance (we reviewed one before) while the Blue series offerings were limited to SATA interface. Hence, SN500 generally helps elevate the WD Blue series and allows customers to obtain NVMe SSD at a lower price point at the same time.
That being said, the performance level between WD Blue and WD Black NVMe solid state drives are still worlds apart. According to their specifications, the Blue SN500 500GB model has sequential read speeds of up to 1700MB/s while the Black SN750 500GB can go up to 3470MB/s.
The difference is less jarring when it comes to sequential write speed although still significant as Blue SN500 500GB is able to reach up to 1450MB/s and Black SN750 500GB can go up to 2600MB/s. Somehow, the gap is significantly lower for the 250GB models at 1300MB/s for Blue SN500 and 1600MB/s for Black SN750.
Price-wise, the 250GB model will retail for US$54.99 (~RM224), while the 500GB version will cost US$77.99 (~RM319). At the time of writing, WD Malaysia did not specify local pricing or availability for the SN500.
(Source: WD via Business Wire)
