Western Digital Blue SN500 NVMe M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x2 SSD

Western Digital Corp. is accelerating the NVMe transition of value-PC storage by adding an NVMe model to its WD Blue SSD portfolio, the Blue SN500 NVMe SSD.

This SSD delivers three times the performance of its SATA counterpart ⁽¹⁾ while maintaining the reliability the company’s Blue product line. For content creators and PC enthusiasts, the Blue SN500 NVMe SSD is optimized for multitasking and resource-heavy applications, providing near-instant access to files and programs.

Leveraging the scalable in-house SSD architecture of the Black SN750 NVMe SSD, the Blue SN500 NVMe SSD is also built on the company’s own 3D NAND technology, firmware and controller, and delivers sequential read and write speeds up to 1,700MB/s and 1,450MB/s respectively (for 500GB model) with power consumption of 2.7W. ^(*) Demands on storage are continuing to grow and client workloads are evolving, the Blue SN500 NVMe SSD features high sustained write performance over SATA as well as other emerging technologies on the market to give that performance edge.

“The PC industry continues its transition from SATA to the NVMe protocol, along with the expectation from consumers that computers continue to become faster and more responsive,” said Don Jeanette, TrendFocus, Inc. “Within the mainstream segment, content creators are consistently doing more, such as editing 4K or 8K video files, creating and streaming content, and managing massive amounts of data internally. The new WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will enable larger file loads that require faster storage.“

“Content transitioning from 4K and 8K means it’s a perfect time for video and photo editors, content creators, heavy data users, and PC enthusiasts to transition from SATA to NVMe,” said Eyal Bek, VP, marketing, data center and client computing, Western Digital. “The WD Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will enable customers to build high-performance laptops and PCs with fast speeds and enough capacity in a reliable, rugged and slim form factor.“

In slim form factor notebooks or desktop PCs, the Blue SN500 NVMe SSD will be available in 250GB and 500GB capacities in a single-sided M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 x2 form factor. MSRP in the U.S. is $54.99 for 250GB (model number: WDS250G1B0C) and $77.99 for 500GB (model number: WDS500G1B0C).

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⁽¹⁾ Based on the Blue SATA SSD maximum sequential read speed of 560MB/s and the Blue SN500 NVMe SSD maximum sequential read of 1,700MB/s.
^(*) As used for transfer speed, MB/s = one million bytes per second. Performance will vary depending on your hardware and software components and configurations.