New WD Blue NVMe SSD balances value and performance

With more content creators moving to 4K video creation, hard drive speed definitely helps accelerate the process. While SSDs have been popular for years now, NVMe SSDs are slowly gaining popularity. Unfortunately, an NVMe version of an SSD drive is usually pricier than their SATA SSD counterpart. The new Western Digital WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD aims to bring better performance at an affordable price for content creators.

“Content transitioning from 4K and 8K means it’s a perfect time for video and photo editors, content creators, heavy data users, and PC enthusiasts to transition from SATA to NVMe. The WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will enable customers to build high-performance laptops and PCs with fast speeds and enough capacity in a reliable, rugged and slim form factor.”

Eyal Bek, vice president marketing, data center and client computing, Western Digital

Based on the current WD Blue SATA SSD drives with read speeds of 560MB/s, the new WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD is over three times faster with maximum sequential read speeds of 1,700MB/s. As for write speeds, the 250GB version has sequential write speeds of up to 1,300MB/s, random read IOPS of up to 210K, and random write IOPS up to 170K. The 500GB version, on the other hand, has sequential write speeds of up to 1,450MB/s, random read IOPS of up to 275K, and random write IOPS up to 300K.

The SN500 is built using Western Digital’s 3D NAND technology, firmware, controller, and offers efficient power consumption as low as 2.7W. Both version feature a PCIe Gen3 8Gb/s x2 interface which is backward compatible with PCIe Gen3 x1, PCIe Gen2 x4, PCIe Gen2 x2, and PCIe Gen2 x1.

We did mention affordability. On that note, the WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will be available in 250GB and 500GB capacities in a single-sided M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x2 form factor. The MSRP in the U.S. is US$54.99 for 250GB (model number: WDS250G1B0C) and $77.99 for 500GB (model number: WDS500G1B0C).

What do you think about the new WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD? Are you going to be picking one up? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook, or MeWe.

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Last Updated on February 3, 2021.