Western Digital M.2 SSDs – Blue SATA and Black NVMe PCIe SSD

Western Digital has launched their line up of M.2 SSDs a while ago. The versatile M.2 port in your motherboard replaces the mSATA standard. It can take in SSD which are very small in size. This allows the new age computing devices like ultrabooks and tablets to be very thin and yet have a large storage. In a desktop, the space saved can result in a better performance and space utilization. The M.2 connector interface supports PCI Express 3.0, Serial ATA 3.0 and USB 3.0 in addition to NVM Express (NVMe logical device interface for PCIe SSDs.

The Western Digital Blue M.2 SATA drive is very similar to the traditional 2.5″ SATA in terms of performance. But it is much smaller in size. It eliminates the needs for additional cables in the CPU.  During my tests, I got a speed of around 500 MB/s for both sequential read and write tests. I tested the 250 GB variant and it retails for around Rs 9000 currently in the market.

The WD Blue is a basic M.2 SSD, but if you want to raise the bar and get in the big league, the WD Black NVMe SSD is the one to pick.

WD Black NVMe SSD uses planar TLC NAND and it offers much higher data transfer speeds. 3D NAND technology is yet to come to WD SSDs, but with what we have now, the TLC NAND offers great speeds for gaming and other resource consuming computing needs. During my test, the WD Black gave me around 2000 MB/s for both sequential read and write tests. It is surprisingly faster than many of the 3D TLC NAND based SSDs. I have replaced my SATA SSD with the WD Black and the performance difference in the system is tremendous. WD Blue gave me marginally better or mostly similar performance than the 120 GB  SATA SSD on my desktop. But the WD Black is as fast as a lightning thunderbolt. I would call it the “Black Thunder”.

I am not an avid gamer, but I did spend a few hours with Call of Duty and Splinter Cell, after installing them on this drive. OS loading time was much quicker and game loading was instantaneous. I have a basic Zotak 2 GB 710 graphics card, so I can’t comment much on the gaming performance. My system is used for video editing and rendering. These resource intensive tasks seemed like lightweight jobs with the WD Black on board.

WD Black is retailing for a price of about Rs 21k for the 512 GB. WD Blue is selling for around 9k for the 250 GB. I would recommend the WD Blue if you are looking for a space-saving solution. But for better performance compared to a traditional SATA SSD, you need the WD Black. Check your motherboard compatibility first and if that checks out, and you are in the field involving resource-intensive tasks like gaming or media editing, you must definitely consider the WD Black and you will never regret.

P.C: RevAtlas