“After acquiring SanDisk and introducing WD Green and WD Blue SSDs, it is no surprise to see Western Digital introduce a WD Black SSD that is a M.2 PCIe drive,” Billy Tallis writes for AnandTech. “In keeping with SanDisk’s recent trends for mainstream consumer SSDs, the WD Black uses a Marvell controller (the 88SS1093, also seen in the Plextor M8Pe) and uses SanDisk’s 15nm TLC NAND flash. And yes, the blue PCB is another SanDisk hallmark, even though it clashes with Western Digital’s branding for the drive.”
“The WD Black comes in only the two capacities that should be most popular: 256GB and 512GB,” Tallis writes. “A 128GB PCIe SSD risks squandering much of the advantage of the faster interface due to the low number of NAND dies being a bottleneck, and 1TB PCIe SSDs are still expensive enough to be substantially less popular. A 1TB version would also need to be a double-sided M.2 module, which would limit compatibility with some laptops. As expected for a TLC SSD, the rated read performance is much higher than the write performance, though Western Digital does still give the WD Black a very nice looking random write rating. The endurance ratings for the WD Black are a little lower than I’d like to see given that even a TLC-based PCIe SSD is something of a premium product, but the five year warranty is quite reasonable.”
“Overall, the WD Black is probably the best PCIe SSD Western Digital could have built using their SanDisk planar TLC NAND. It’s clearly a much faster low-end PCIe offering than the Intel SSD 600p despite the latter’s potential advantage from using 3D TLC NAND,” Tallis writes. “The price Western Digital is asking is about 10% higher than what the Intel SSD 600p is currently going for. For users with light to moderate workloads the cheaper 600p will still be plenty fast, but if you have a particularly heavy workload or expect to operate the drive nearly full, the WD Black is probably a worthwhile step up.”
Tons more in the full reviews – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Note: Currently, the Western Digital WD Black 512GB Performance SSD is available via Amazon for $210. The 256GB version sells for $127.
Great! I’ll buy one answered put it in my Malacca oh never mind!
Maaaaac…. that is.
Sounds like a great upgrade to a Mac. If your Mac was made before 2012 that is.
For hackintoshers.
i have a samsung 950 pro m.2 as my boot drive in my hackintosh.
it boots up in about 5 seconds.
How does it hold up to OSX updates? I made one several years ago, but just got tired of the cat and mouse game.