WD Blue SN550 1TB SSD Review

WD’s Blue range of drives covers the mainstream market segment and consists of traditional mechanical drives, as well as SATA based SSDs in both 2.5in and M.2 formats and the first NVMe based Blue drive, the M.2 SN500. Now we have the arrival of the fourth generation Blue SSD and the second NVMe Blue drive, the SN550.

The SN550 Blue is a leap forward from the SN500 Blue drive in controller, interface and choice of NAND. Unlike its predecessor which had a PCIe Gen.3 x2 interface, the new SN550 has a revamped in house WD controller with a full fat PCIe Gen3 x4 interface which obviously gives it a serious performance boost over the older drive. Not only that, the SN550 also uses the latest 96-layer SanDisk 3D TLC NAND.

The new SN550 has a larger 1TB flagship drive than the SN500 which topped out a just 500GB. The other two capacities in the range are 250GB and 500GB.

As with the SN500, the single-sided layout of the drive looks a little odd with the controller sitting on the PCB very close to the interface contacts with the single NAND package sitting on the other end of the PCB with a lot of empty space between them.

WD’s official performance figures for the 1TB SN550 are up to 2,400MB/s for Sequential reads and up to 1,950MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we could confirm these figures with the review drive producing figures of 2,452MB/s for reads and 2,064MB/s for writes. Our own Sequential tests produced a peak read figure of 2,417.61MB/s with writes coming in at 2,079.41MB/s.

Quoted 4K random performance figures are up to 410,000 IOPS for reads and up to 405,000 IOPS IOPS for writes, both figures were obtained by running the drive at a QD of 32 with 8 threads. Using our standard QD32 4T tests the best figures we saw from the drive were 244.020 IOPS for reads and 204,873 IOPS for writes. However, a quick test using the same QD and number of threads as stated in the official figures confirmed produced a read performance of 424,903.3 IOPS with writes at 403,767.8 IOPS.

WD’s Blue SN550 may not be the fastest NVMe drive we’ve seen, but it does show the technology progress WD is making in a relatively short time frame, as its a much better performer than its predecessor, the SN500.

WD are pricing the drives at £50/£70/£125 for the 250/500/1TB versions respectively. You can get them HERE at the WD Store directly.

Pros

• 96-Layer NAND.
• Overall performance.
• 5-year warranty.

Cons

• Couldn't match the official 4K speeds with our standard tests.

Kitguru says: WD's SN550 Blue is an impressive drive for the mainstream market and is a marked improvement on its predecessor in both the technology used and performance gained as a result.

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