WD Blue SN580 1TB SSD Review

Rating: 8.0.

WD's latest SSD is the Blue SN580, a mainstream drive and the successor to the popular SN570. The new drive uses a PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface rather than the PCIe Gen 3 x4 of the SN570. With the 1TB model available for just over £50, we put this drive through its paces to see if it's worth buying.

The WD Blue SN580 comes in four capacities; 250GB. 500GB, 1TB (the drive we are looking at here) and a flagship 2TB drive. The drive uses a combination of a SanDisk four-channel controller (details of which are very scarce) and 112-Layer BiCS5 3D TLC NAND.

WD quote Sequential read/write performance figures for the 1TB Blue SN580 as up to 4,150MB/s. The 250GB and 500GB drives are rated as up to 4,000MB/s for reads while the 2TB drive has the same 4,150MB/s read figure as the 1TB drive. As for write performance, the 250GB drive is rated as up to 2,000MB/s, the 500GB drive 3,600MB/s and the 2TB drive 4,150MB/s.

When it comes to 4K random performance the 1TB and 2TB drives are rated as up to 600,000 IOPS and 750,000 IOPS for reads and writes respectively. The 500GB drive gets the same 750,000 IOPS write figure but with a 450,000 IOPS read rating. The 250GB drive has read/write figures of up to 240,000 IOPS and up to 470,000 IOPS respectively.

WD rate the endurance of the 1TB drive as 600TBW and back the drive with a 5-year warranty.

Physical Specifications:

• Usable Capacities: 1TB.
• NAND Components: 112-Layer BiCS5 3D TLC NAND.
• NAND Controller: SanDisk 4-channel.
• Cache: none.
• Interface: PCIe Gen 4 x4, NVMe 1.4.
• Form Factor: M.2, 2280.
• Dimensions: 80 x 22 x 2.38mm.
• Drive Weight: 5.5g

Firmware Version: 281010WD.

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