Western Digital Blue SSD Review, a Good First Start

Conclusion

Western Digital’s Blue SSD has a lot going for it, being borne of the tried and true designs of SanDisk’s own vaults. It was already earmarked as a good drive by virtue of their new association with that NAND company. SanDisk is a very successful solid state storage company, and they’ve been able to now apply their expertise and create drives for all segments of the market. Does this mean that SanDisk is now reserved from the ultra fast and WD for the consumer? Or will they saturate the market with products from all tiers in both companies. Regardless, this means the Western Digital name can be used to help spread SSD love to more people.

It’s a strong performer without necessarily being the most overly exuberant. The good thing is it has good bones underneath, and a good controller that makes for a great drive. Not the fastest, but a great drive. It was very close, within spitting distance, of the more expensive MLC-based Extreme Pro, which isn’t necessarily easy to do. It’s somewhat strange that they chose nearly the same drive as the very well made SanDisk X400 for their first go around, but it does make for a good drive at a good price point. Perhaps that’s the strategy, not to break records or make a statement, but to slowly build that public confidence in the NAND market with the WD name.

The WD Blue SSD is a good drive that’s decently fast and does well in sequential workloads as well as random workloads with ease. Even better is that in mixed-workloads, transferring a random and large amount of mixed-sized files, it does rather well. Now, it’s not magical by any means and there are plenty of drives at or around this price point that could do the same, or better. But it does keep some consistent performance, even if it’s a bit low. That’s the rub, then. It doesn’t make any great statement that grabs at your attention. There are plenty of other options that’ll provide the same, or better, experience at this price point, so it’s hard to recommend outright. As a drive, it’ll be reliable, thanks to SanDisk engineering, though you may just want an X400 instead. If the price were a bit lower, it would be an even better buy. It’s still a good drive, just not the most recommended outright.

Overall, it’s not a bad first attempt at getting back in the ol’ SSD business though. I suspect that there’ll be even better drives in the future than just the WD Blue. This is just the beginning.