Western Digital is taking on Samsung at the high-end of the NVMe solid state drive spectrum with a new line of performance drives at comparatively attractive price points. We haven’t tested these new SSDs yet, but if they live up to WD’s speed ratings, they could prove popular alternatives to Samsung’s blazing fast 960 Pro family.
The new drives ship in the M.2 2280 form factor, being NVMe drives, they fly data through the PCIe bus, allowing for much faster speeds compared to SATA.
There are three capacities being offered—1TB, 500GB, and 250GB. Here is how the sequential speed ratings break down:
- WD Black 3D NVMe 1TB: 3,400MB/s read, 2,800MB/s write
- WD Black 3D NVMe 512GB: 3,400MB/s read, 2,500MB/s write
- WD Black 3D NVMe 250GB: 3,000MB/s read, 1,600MB/s write
And here’s a breakdown of the 4K random read and write performance ratings:
- WD Black 3D NVMe 1TB: 500,000 IOPS read, 400,000 IOPS write
- WD Black 3D NVMe 512GB: 410,000 IOPS read, 330,000 IOPS write
- WD Black 3D NVMe 250GB: 220,000 IOPS read, 170,000 IOPS write
While we haven’t tested these ourselves, the rated numbers compare favorably to Samsung’s 960 Pro line.
Pricing and Availability
The Western Digital Black 3D NVMe SSD is available in the U.S. in capacities of 250GB ($119.99 USD), 500GB ($229.99 USD) and 1TB ($449.99 USD). The new drives will be available by late April 2018 in select Western Digital retailers, e-tailers, resellers, system integrators and distributors globally.
