WD Black 512GB

This NVMe drive can’t keep up with this month’s front-runners, but it hits a good balance of price and performance

Western Digital’s Black M.2 SSD targets a similar market to the Corsair MP500. It doesn’t aim to be the fastest SSD on the market, but to provide performance a step up from SATA.

Unlike the Corsair, however, the WD Black is priced cheaply enough to make the proposition interesting. The half-terabyte model comes in at £51 more than the SATA-connected Crucial MX300 – and when you note that it offers more than double the sequential read speeds, and close to double the write speeds, that doesn’t sound like an unreasonable premium. It’s just a shame there’s no 1TB model for digital hoarders.

The WD Black doesn’t feature hardware encryption, but you get the same downloads as with the WD Blue, namely Acronis imaging and backup software, and WD’s own SSD Dashboard.

One area where the WD Black loses out to the Corsair MP500 is write endurance – its 160TBW rating can’t compete with the Corsair’s 698TBW. That’s not a showstopper though, especially when you recall that the WD Black is this month’s cheapest NVMe SSD. Don’t be distracted by Adata and Samsung’s M.2 offerings – those are SATA drives, and their performance is accordingly limited. If you really feel the need for speed you might be happier shelling out for the Samsung 960 Evo. But if you just want to give your PC extra zip, the WD Black is an affordable way to break through the SATA ceiling.