WD Black D50 Game Dock 1TB Review

The WD Black D50 comes in a stout box with an image of the dock on the front, which is very nearly life-size. Under the right-hand side of the image we see the drive's capacity and its read speed in both English and French.

The back of the box has again a near life-size image of the rear of the dock with all the major ports labelled in English and where necessary, French. To the left of this image is a box contents list, again in both English and French along with logos informing users of the 5-year warranty and that the SSD inside the unit uses 3D NAND.

One side panel of the box has an image of the front panel of drive and this time it is labelled as being life-sized.

The D50 comes bundled with a Thunderbolt 3 cable, a 180W power adapter (Delta Electronics ADP-180TB F) and a quick install guide.

WD's Black D50 Game Dock is a compact unit (120 x 120 x 55mm) with a metal enclosure. As with other recent WD Game releases it has the look of a modern-day weapons crate, the sort that you will find in any half-decent game. One side panel has the WD branding on it.

Housed in the front of the dock are two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one Type-A (also a charging port) and one Type-C as well as the audio port. At the bottom of the front panel is the white power/drive indicator LED.

All the remaining ports are in the back panel of the D50. Sitting under the grill for the active cooling fan are; a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports (one of which supports 87W pass-through charging, a DisplayPort 1.4 port, a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and a single USB Type-C ports as well at the Gigabit Ethernet port. Finally, there is the power input port for the 180W power brick.

The base of the drive is dominated by heat exhaust grill. Built into the base of one side panel (the one carrying the WD branding) of the Black D50 is the RGB lighting effect. Now some RGB effects dazzle and distract you, but this one is the polar opposite.  The LEDs for the RGB sit behind a plastic strip that measures just 75mm long by 2mm wide. It's very subtle, so to see it at its best, use the drive on its side. There are 13 different LED pattern effects to choose from which are controlled via WD's Dashboard SSD management software.

WD’s SSD Dashboard (v3.2.2.9 supports the Black D50) is one of the best and about as comprehensive an SSD management utility as you’ll likely to find. It displays information on drive temperature, life remaining and a whole lot more including a live performance monitor. There isn’t any cloning utility incorporated into the dashboard but Acronis True Image WD Edition which can download from WD’s website.

One page of SSD Dashboard is the control page for the RGB lighting system which has 13 basic pattern effects with options to tinker about with the colours being used. It is also compatible with the most common of the motherboard RGB systems out there; MSI’s Mystic Light Sync, Asus’ Aura Sync, Razor Chroma RGB and Gigabyte’s RGB Fusion.

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