Seagate 510 NVMe SSD Firecuda & Barracuda

Can Seagate challenge the market leaders?

Seagate is better known for its hard drive range, but the industry is increasingly transitioning over to solid state. Can it take on the likes of Samsung and Western Digital in performance and price?

The Barracuda 510 512GB is a typical NVMe M.2 2280 (80mm) drive with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. It won’t be winning any beauty contests thanks to its blue PCB and unattractive text crammed onto its white sticker. Looks aside though, it has a decent set of specifications. Sequential performance looks good with 3400 MB/s read and 2180 MB/s write speeds. An endurance rating of 320 terabytes written is also decent for a mid-range drive.

Seagate’s Seatools app is a good piece of software, which along with its DiscWizard cloning and migration app is among the better SSD software suites around.

The Barracuda delivers solid performance without

being exceptional. Its random write performance is strong but this isn’t too important for a consumer class drive.

As the Barracuda 510 isn’t a particularly chart topping drive, it needs to offer good value to compete in a tough marketplace, and that’s where it falls down. At the time of writing the 512GB 510 drive is selling for around $211 and places it very close to the likes of the Samsung 970 Pro. This drive simply isn’t worth that much.

The Barracuda 512GB SSD is a decent performing drive, but until its pricing comes more into line with its direct competitors, then it’s tough to recommend it.