Does it support 4K gaming? Featuring an active power draw up to 25% lower than previous generations of WD Blue SSDs, you’re able to work longer before recharging your laptop, while sequential read speeds up to 560MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 530MB/s give the speed you want for your most demanding computing applications. Get details in Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D Nand internal PC SSD – SATA III 6 GB/s M.2 2280 review.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• High TBW rating with latest 3D NAND
• Superb sequential speeds!
• Excellent cost-per-GB
• Available in 2.5-inch and M.2 form factors
• Value is further enhanced by bundled software
• MLC-Like performance
• Aggressive endurance rating
• No loss of sustained write speed as with other TLC SSDs

Cons

• Some TLC consistency issues

• Boring label design could turn off PC enthusiasts who like to show off their hardware

Specs

• Max 4K Random Read Speed: up to 95,000 IOPS
• Max 4K Random Write Speed: up to 84,000 IOPS
• Sequential Read: up to 560 MB/s
• Sequential Write: up to 530 MB/s
• Endurance: 400TBW
• Avg. Active Power: 52-60mW
• DEVSLP 4.9-9.7mW
• MTTF: 1.75 Million Hours
• Warranty: 3-Year Limited Warranty
• ECC
• SMART
• TRIM
• Garbage Collection
• Software: SSD Toolbox, Acronis Migration Software

Price

The low-capacity WD Blue 3D models appear to have a slightly lower price than the Ultra 3D equivalents. For instance, the WD Blue 3D 250GB retails for $89.99, but the Ultra 3D 250GB is $99.99.

B&H also lists the SanDisk Ultra 3D 2TB for $549.99, but it doesn’t list the WD Blue 2TB. Pricing scales up with the two mid-capacity models, but expect to pay around $150 for the 500GB and $280 for the 1TB early during the early release cycle. 

Compare Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D Nand internal PC SSD – SATA III 6 GB/s M.2 2280

Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D Nand internal PC SSD – SATA III 6 GB/s M.2 2280 review

Build

The top of the drive’s enclosure is made from plastic. The bottom and sides of the drive enclosure are formed from sheet aluminum. There is a manufacturers’ label that lists the particulars of the SSD.

Because both SSDs are identical other than the manufacturers’ sticker, we are only opening one of them. The enclosure is held together with four screws that are located under the label on the back of the drive’s enclosure. There is a thermal pad placed on the drive’s controller.

Design

Both the WD Blue 3D and the SanDisk Ultra 3D are available in capacities ranging from 250GB on up to 2TB. The WD Blue 3D is available in an M.2 x 2280 form factor as well as the conventional 2.5″ x 7mm SATA III form factor. The SanDisk Ultra 3D is only available as a 2.5″ form factor SSD. Looking at the spec sheet provided to us, we see that performance doesn’t drop off by much at the smaller 250GB capacity point; which is encouraging to see.

SATA 6 Gb/s Interface

The 1TB WD Blue 3D NAND SSD is a Serial ATA drive, with native support for SATA 6 Gb/s interface. It is backward-compatible, so you will have no problem using it with older SATA 3 Gb/s controllers. However, the faster SATA 6 Gb/s interface is necessary for optimal performance because this SSD is capable of a peak transfer rate of 560 MB/s.

Controller

WD tapped the Marvell 88SS1074 4-channel controller with low-density parity check (LDPC) error correction. This is the same controller WD used in the older Blue SSD that began shipping in 2016. Crucial also uses the controller in the MX300. The controller has yet to impress us with the products we’ve tested, but that may change today. 

Read and write speed

The high-capacity models provide 560/530 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput, while the 250GB model drops 550/525 MB/s. Random performance weighs in at 95,000/84,000 read/write IOPS for most models, but the 250GB drops to 81,000 write IOPS.

TBW

The 250GB has a 100TBW endurance rating, and that doubles for each capacity up to the 1TB drive’s 400TBW. The 2TB models feature a 500TBW rating, which is a modest endurance increase over the 1TB’s 400TBW.

Cache

The 1TB WD Blue 3D NAND SSD (Price Check) uses the aforementioned nCache 2.0 technology instead of a dedicated SDRAM write combine cache. It reserves about 4% of the NAND blocks and uses them in the SLC mode.

The resulting nCache 2.0 write cache may not be as fast as an SDRAM cache, but it is much larger in size. The 1TB WD Blue SSD, for example, boasts a large 1 GB DDR3L memory cache, but that is nothing compared to the 13 GB (or so) SLC cache in the 1TB WD Blue 3D SSD.

Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D Nand internal PC SSD – SATA III 6 GB/s M.2 2280 Performance review

The WD Blue 3D performed quite well in the read portion of this test, reaching a maximum sustained transfer rate of 518MB per second, which is about as much as you can expect from a SATA drive in this test. As you can see, it was only a few megabytes per second slower than the fastest drive, with most of the drives clustered close. 

CrystalDiskMark is a quick benchmark for storage, working well with either SSDs and HDDs. We see that the WD Blue 3D NAND SSD 1TB lives up to Western Digital’s claims, delivering 562MB/s read and 532MB/s write speeds. It is a clear upgrade over the older WD Blue SSD 1TB, with bigger numbers across the board.

The WD Blue impressed us once again on this test, coming in as the second-fastest SATA drive of this lot, just 2MB per second slower overall than the budget-oriented Toshiba OCZ TL100. More important, it edged out (barely) two of its main competitors, the Samsung SSD 850 EVO and the just-released Intel SSD 545s, albeit by margins small enough to make no perceptible difference in the real world. 

Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D Nand internal PC SSD – SATA III 6 GB/s M.2 2280 customer review

And awesome boost in speed compared to HDD

Simply put, I have been using an HDD for years and I’m rather mad at myself for not upgrading earlier. I was so used to clicking on a picture that was locally stored and waiting 5-6 seconds just for it to open. Even my explorer windows were painfully slow as well as general functions. It didn’t seem to matter that I had a 6 core 12 thread processor in my system because the day-to-day functions were bottle-necked by my old hard drive. Installing it is no problem since it uses the same SATA interface as the old hard drives and can be easily screwed into any drive cage.

I then fully cloned my system drive to this SSD so I could use it as my (C:) Drive. Looking up a tutorial on youtube helped me to get the program I needed to clone the drive, and after that, man did this thing feel like a new computer.

All I have to say is that I’m never going back to HDD’s unless I need to create some kind of archival mass storage server. I just hope that they figure out how to fit more storage on these little things.

By Mike at Best Buy

Alternate of Western Digital 1TB WD Blue 3D Nand internal PC SSD – SATA III 6 GB/s M.2 2280

WD Black SN850

Specs

• Capacities: 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB
• Form Factor: M.2 2280 Single-sided
• Transfer Interface/Protocol: PCIe 4.0 x4 / NVMe 1.4
• Sequential Reads/Writes: 7,000 MBps / 5,300 MBps
• Warranty/Endurance: 5 Years / Up to 1,200 TBW

Cons

+Competitive performance

+Software package

+5-year warranty

+Large dynamic SLC cache

+Black PCB

Cons

-Hot under heavy load-High idle power consumption on desktop test bench

-AES 256-bit encryption not supported

WD’s Black SN850 paired with the company’s new 16nm WD Black G2 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe 1.4 SSD controller marks a substantial improvement in the company’s SSD architecture. WDs Black SN850 can sustain speeds of up to 7/5.3 GBps and deliver very responsive random performance enabling the SSD to go toe-to-toe with our top pick. Although, that is at the cost of high idle power consumption on our desktop test bench. Also, unlike the Samsung 980 Pro, the WD Black SN850 lacks AES 256-bit encryption.

With ever-so-much faster random performance, a more consistent write profile, and higher efficiency, Samsung’s 980 PRO earned the title as our top pick for a next-gen PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe, but WD’s Black SN850 makes for a top-tier runner-up. Depending on the price, you can’t go wrong with either one for your high-end gaming or workstation build.

Editor’s recommendations

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