WD Blue SN550
If you’re not dealing with storage-hungry games or massive databases, the SN550 is a bargain
SCORE
PRICE 1TB, £70 (£80 inc VAT) from pcpro.link/324sn5
READ SPEED 2,221 MB/ SEC
WRITE SPEED 1,905 MB/ SEC
While WD’s Black SN850 drive takes the crown for performance, the Blue SN550 focuses on value. A street price of £80 inc VAT for the 1TB model works out to a mere 9p per gigabyte, making this very nearly the cheapest SSD here – only Samsung’s SATAbased 870 QVO undercuts it.
When it comes to performance, the WD Blue leaves the QVO in the dust. Its sequential read and write speeds are around four times as fast as any SATA drive, thanks to the far superior NVMe architecture. Real-world performance benefits as well: in the PCMark system drive benchmark, the Blue SN550 scored a creditable 1,668.
WD hasn’t skimped on the trimmings. As with the WD Black SN850, the Blue drive comes with a complimentary download of Acronis True Image for Western Digital, which can simplify the process of migrating your system onto your new drive, and provide backup services for up to five years thereafter. That’s also how long the warranty lasts – this drive may be cheap, but it’s intended to keep going for just as long as WD’s high-end SSDs, and the 1TB model has a 600TBW endurance rating.
By now you might well be wondering what the catch is. One minor point to note is that none of WD’s M.2 SSDs support hardware encryption, so if security is a concern you might choose to look elsewhere.
Probably the more significant issue is speed. While the SN550 is a perfectly good performer, it sits at the bottom of its class. Every other NVMe SSD this month delivered faster read rates, and almost all were speedier at writing too. As a result, in the PCMark data drive test its score of 1,192 was by far the lowest of any M.2 drive. If you’re using a modern motherboard that supports PCIe Gen4, there are alternatives that are two and even three times as fast.
Yet, if you rarely play games and don’t work with huge databases, the difference between this SSD and those range-topping contenders won’t be that noticeable. The Blue SN550 is fast enough to keep Windows and desktop applications smooth and responsive, and for many roles, that’s all you need. This little SSD provides a major speed boost over legacy SATA drives for a lower price, making it a bargain.