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WD launched the first NVMe drive for the mainstream Blue range in April 2019, the SN500. Today we have the next generation Blue NVMe drive, the SN550 in for review. Just like its SN500 predecessor, it uses a combination of WD’s own in-house controller and 3D TLC NAND.
The new SN550 not only sees an increase in capacity from the SN500, but more importantly, the new drive has a PCIe x4 interface rather than a x2 interface and it ditches the 64-layer 3D TLC NAND in favour of 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND. At launch, there are three capacities in the SN550 range – a 250GB, 500GB and the flagship 1TB drive we are looking at here.
WD quote Sequential read/write performance (QD32 T1) for the range as up to 2,400MB/s for all three drives with writes varying with capacity; 250GB, 950MB/s, 500MB, 1,750MB/s with the 1TB drive rated at up to 1,950MB/s.
Random read performance (QD32 T8) for the SN550 range is quoted as up to 170,000 IOPS for the 250GB drive, 300,000 IOPS for the 500GB drive and up to 410,000 IOPS for the 1TB drive. Random write figures for the range are; up to 135,000 IOPS for the 250GB drive, 240,000 IOPS for the 500GB drive and up to 405,000 IOPS for the 1TB drive.
Endurance for the 1TB drive is quoted at 600TBW and WD backs the drive with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
Usable Capacities: 1TB.
NAND Components: SanDisk 96-layer 3D TLC.
NAND Controller: WD NVMe.
Cache: none.
Interface: PCIe Gen 3 x4
Form Factor: 2280 M.2.
Dimensions: 22 x 80 x 2.3mm.
Drive Weight: 6.5g.
Firmware Version: 211000WD.
