Western Digital Blue SSD Goes NVMe: 3x Performance vs SATA Version

Western Digital (WD) has announced the new WD Blue SN 500 NVMe SSD, taking their Blue SSD M.2 form factor drive and gracing it with NVMe internals, as well as a new controller and NAND shared with its faster brother, the WD Black SN750 NVMe. This mating of silicon is said to allow the drive to reach sequential read and write speeds up to 1700 MB/s and 1450 MB/s, respectively in the 500 GB model. WD says the Blue SN500 is optimized for content creators, like 4K and 8K video editors, and PC enthusiasts while balancing capacity and price.

The Blue SN500 will come in two capacities, 250 GB (WDS250G1B0C) and 500 GB (WDS500G1B0C), using a single-sided M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x2 form factor. The offering uses a home-baked WD controller and firmware (both different from the Black SN750) along the same 64-Layer BICS 3D TLC NAND.

Admittedly, I am surprised there's no 1 TB capacity in this lineup. Hopefully, WD will add a larger drive, as shoppers look for a good balance of capacity, pricing and performance and more vendors offer larger and larger capacities at both SATA and PCIe/NVMe levels.

Additionally, you can monitor the SSD with the WD SSD Dashboard and check the status of its available capacity, temperatures, SMART attributes and more. Full specifications are in the table below. 

WD Blue SN 500 SSD Specs and Price

Pricing on the 250 GB model is $54.99 while the 500GB model is $77.99. This is in line with the MSRP of similar performing and sized drives, like the Patriot Scorch 256 GB (1700/1500 MB/s for $80) or Corsair MP300 (1580/920 MB/s at $55). The drives will carry a 5-year warranty. 

As far as availability, these can be found today at select retailers. Additional information is available on the product webpage.