Western Digital has expanded its lineup of branded solid-state drives by introducing the WD Blue SN5000 series. These new offerings are positioned as relatively affordable models with performance levels sufficient for everyday tasks.
All models in the WD Blue SN500 series are available in the M.2 2280 form factor, support PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, and are equipped with a proprietary 4-channel controller without DRAM cache. There are four versions of the SSD to choose from – 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB (with TBW endurance ratings of 300, 600, 900, and 1200 TB respectively).
The advertised sequential read speeds of the new SSDs are up to 5500 MB/s, with write speeds up to 5000 MB/s depending on the capacity. The top version of the drive achieves a performance of up to 690,000 4K IOPS for random read operations and 900,000 4K IOPS for writes. The entry-level model reaches 460,000 and 770,000 4K IOPS respectively.
In the USA market, the WD Blue SN500 starts at $70 for the 500GB version, while the top-end 4TB model is priced at $280.