Review: WD Black NVMe SSD (1TB)

Conclusion

A dearth of high-performance third-party controllers has lead to the big storage companies looking inward and design their own. This is why, after years in development, WD has also come to the high-end PCIe NVMe party with its own controller and, in conjunction with Toshiba, access to its own NAND.

The sum of these efforts is the Black NVMe that's available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB flavours in the familiar, ubiquitous M.2 2280 form factor. The head honcho, priced at £375, isn't cheap, but it's the going rate for drives of this ilk.

Leveraging these in-house technologies results in a drive that's squarely aimed at the performance enthusiast and digital content creator. Super-fast sequential speeds are backed by decent IOPS when under the pump, and it appears to be a good all-rounder in the premium end of the market.

We'll really know where it fits into the ultra-fast consumer SSD landscape when compared directly against the just-announced Samsung 970 Evo (its natural competitor at $450) and Pro - wait just a little while for that - but we feel that WD has a credible offering for performance junkies.

WD Black NVMe SSD (1TB)

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The WD Black NVMe 1TB SSD is available from Scan Computers*

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