WD Blue SSDs are the brand’s first consumer SSDs after WD acquired SanDisk last year. With PC users favouring faster data transfer rates and better safety features, SSDs are slowly becoming a viable replacement for hard disk drives (HDDs), as they can greatly reduce boot and load times, and are a lot easier to maintain and carry around than an HDD.
The WD Blue is a SATA SSD available in two form factors: a 2.5″ and an M.2 version, and comes in three variants: 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB. It is supposed to be their mainstream SSD that focuses on PC enthusiasts, gamers and content creators.
Like most Solid State Drives, the WD Blue 2.5″ is rather compact, only 7 mm in height. It comes in a black metal case which is mostly covered with stickers on both sides. While the top side has WD branding, logo and capacity of the SSD, the sticker and the bottom provides some more details including regulatory information, model no. and serial no.
Benchmarks and Performance
The WD Blue has a high endurance rating, meaning that users should be able to write a huge amount of data to the SSD before rendering it unreliable. This endurance rating for the 250 GB WD Blue SSD is 100 TB, whereas for 500 GB and 1 TB variants, these limits go up to 200 TB and 400 TB respectively. The SSD provides good transfer rates in the CrystalDiskMark benchmarks. The sequential read speed was about 528.7 MBps while the sequential write speed was close to 373 MBps. The random Read and Write speeds for 4KiB were about 29.26 and 52.93 MBps respectively. While this does not move the WD Blue to the top of the list, it does considerably better than a lot of other storage options available. The benefits of using an SSD over an HDD are well known, and these can be easily seen from the numbers obtained, making the WD Blue SSD a favourable choice for gaming enthusiasts and content creators alike.
The Verdict
At the price point of about INR 6700 (on Amazon), the WD Blue SSD may not be the best performer in the market, but it is definitely one of the more affordable storage solutions. Offering fast transfer rates, it can successfully cater to both gamers and PC enthusiasts and makes a great choice for DIY rigs. However, one small thing that people might have an issue with could be that WD is currently offering a three-year warranty on the Blue SSD, while there are options available that have a five-year warranty.
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