WD Black PCIe 512GB SSD Review

[beshonk]

I always preferred sandisk SSDs, they always hit the right price/performance and reliability for me. When i heard they were acquired by western digital, I saw dark clouds...and I was apparently correct to think that WD would drag them down.

 

[Bruce427]

Chris,

Under Best PCIe SSDs, when you click on "Review" for the 960 Pro, it links you to the 2015 review for the 950 Pro.

Just passing this along.

 

[Bruce427]

Chris,

Addendum to above comment: I was referring to the 512GB 960 PRO.

 

[teamninja]

I have no idea what half these people are saying about WD... all WD currently is trying to do now is trying to have a foot in the SSD market I doubt Sandisk had anything new that would bring it above Samsung until the 64bit. WD is doing nothing to Sandisk hell nothing changed about Sandisk SSD.... WD will start pushing with the 64GB per die currently WD have nothing new to add to the SSD market so they are just now trying to have a foot into the market. Truthfully there is nothing wrong with these ssd and nothing has changed with sandisk or their ssd... Have half of you did a comparison? Did those that say the 199$ BXP is better yes its speed might be better but opening windows/apps for the regular consumer it is already capped since these are for consumers there is a 480gb while WD though slower the regular consumers wouldn't care as much as the extra 32GB from their 512GB SSD will have a more overall impact in there decision making

 

[Sam Bittermann]

Well, it's a start...

 

[nycalex]

they didn't even need to compare the samsung 960 pro LOL.

wd black used to mean something back in the days, but even their mechanical black series fall short these days.

i have 2 mechanical HDDs in my rig.

A WD black 2tb and a toshiba x300 6tb.

the toshiba gets about 20-30 mb/s more than the wd black. and it was much cheaper when i purchased them (toshiba $169.99 for 6tb, wd black $139.99 for 2tb).

i no longer buy any wd hard drives, unless i need a cheap hdd, for which the blue series are not so bad.

 

[Guest]

I have no idea what half these people are saying about WD... all WD currently is trying to do now is trying to have a foot in the SSD market I doubt Sandisk had anything new that would bring it above Samsung until the 64bit. WD is doing nothing to Sandisk hell nothing changed about Sandisk SSD.... WD will start pushing with the 64GB per die currently WD have nothing new to add to the SSD market so they are just now trying to have a foot into the market. Truthfully there is nothing wrong with these ssd and nothing has changed with sandisk or their ssd... Have half of you did a comparison? Did those that say the 199$ BXP is better yes its speed might be better but opening windows/apps for the regular consumer it is already capped since these are for consumers there is a 480gb while WD though slower the regular consumers wouldn't care as much as the extra 32GB from their 512GB SSD will have a more overall impact in there decision making

Actually, I remember reading that this was the marketing strategy from the start. In the SSD market, the WD brand would specifically refer to entry level, low performance disks. It's not really WD making these, it's just a sticker they put on it.

Capitalism 101. Marketing 101. Take your great brand of old tech, put it on new bad tech, and gain the alpha from the reputation, while the brand dies, as it would have anyway. WD and Sandisk are their own fake competition. They pretend to compete while segmenting themselves at different markets, price points, and performance. And hope they will together have twice the presence of other brands.

It's a poor strategy, but corporate is going to corpo, all the time.

It's like Milwaukee and Ryobi drills. You may think they are competitors, but it's all Techtronic Hong Kong junk made in China.

 

[Carlos Enrique]

Pathetic for Western Digital, just pathetic.

 

[valeman2012]

I think i will still go for the MyDigital BPX SSD NVMe.

I believe the "Newcomer" MyDigitalSSD BPX ranks behind Samsung Top NVMe SSD..

Around same price you get better overall performance with the MyDigitalSSD.

 

[dextermat]

"The Black PCIe series ships with a 5-year warranty that is limited by write endurance. You lose warranty coverage after you write just 80TB to the 256GB drive"

Kinda false advertisement and for this I pass.

 

[Bruce427]

Chris said: "If you want battery life then the MS driver is better than the Samsung NVMe driver (even 2.1). If you want higher performance use the Samsung driver."

I uninstalled the Samsung 2.1 NVMe driver and reverted back to the native Microsoft driver. Doing this resulted in an additional 24 minutes of battery life.

Interestingly, when I ran benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark and ATTO to see how this affected performance, I actually got slightly better results with the Microsoft driver. Go figure.

 

[tom42]

I have had problems in the last several years with WD drives, and will not buy them again. All their games with "green" etc. different quality levels have turned me off on them.

 

[tom42]

"Take your great brand of old tech, put it on new bad tech, and gain the alpha from the reputation, while the brand dies"

Well said and very true.