WD_BLUE SN570 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 NVMe up to 3500 MB/s

If you have a PCIE 3 motherboard, this is a decent SSD for it. It’s nice and quick, although loading times for stuff I had on a SSD half the speed do not load twice as fast now. Also there is no noticeable difference in OS responsiveness or boot times, but 1TB of gaming storage for 50 is pretty good and I couldn’t see a faster SSD for the same price range.

Good value, but if you spend 30 extra you will get a MUCH faster drive. Decent cheap SSD storage though, would recommend.

Great price, good capacity, fast reliable and well packaged . Nothing to dislike.

We be buying more

Great Ssd for the price,i got a second one for a backup, a deal for 40 percent off with enclosure for 70.

Its a m.a2 drive it works what more can I say. Only issue I had with this is that the picture clearly shows the aluminum heat strip on this but does not come with it. dont get me wrong i would have put a heat shield on this anyway but just to be warned if this is needed and its not included

Was fairly easy and straightforward to install. It does the job and games now load much faster. Good value for the money as well.

This card was easy to install and clone using Western Digital’s free Cloning software. The card performs well with quick access time. I would buy again.

Bought this after doing a lot of research on the actual real world read times of nvme drives . Don’t be fooled by massive sequential read and write times , unless your only moving massive files to empty drives there totally misleading .
In actual real world this budget drive nearly keeps up with the best of the available nvme drives , the cost Vs performance curve is maxed out right here .
Buy it on here , buy it on offer , and forget about crystal disk sequential screen grabs , and be happy with your file system read times and the extra cash in your pocket…

I bought this a while back because my razerblade 15 came with a 256gb samsung nvme drive wich isn’t enough with the size of modern games, It was the best price with a well known name and i haven’t regretted it! I work long hours on empty sites with not much to do outwith patrols so i need things on my laptop to keep me busy, I’ve installed a lot of different games on this and it’s ran all of them without issue! load times are great sure when you test the speeds it won’t match the sn750 or samsung 980 i have in my desktop pc at home but it’s more than good enough for gaming and if you’re on a budget or have spent most your budget on a laptop and can only spend a little bit more for extra storage then i’d highly recommend grabbing one of these or the newer budget model they now have.

It’s never let me down and as with all nvme drives installation is extremely simple.

I paid 185 delivered on 22/07/21 for the 2Tb model (at time of writing the proce has changed to 199) & knew it wasn’t the fastest but was above “middle of the road” in terms of speed read / write performance (read quoted in the listing as “up to” 2600mb/s) and with Crystal reader I’m getting 2,200-2,300 read & can’t get near the quoted 2600, this may be because it’s the 2Tb model but I guess I’m ok with that. The spec of the primary drive (a 1Tb Samsung) is listed at 3300 read & the CrystalRead / same test achieved 3300 repeatedly so I think there’s probably exagerrated marketing going on for this WD Blue SN550 drive. I would return it however, I have installed it into an Acer Predator Triton 500 PT515-52 2020 model (with 10th gen i7 & 2080 Super Max-Q) & in this particular chassis, the motherboard is reversed so RAM & storage is on the adjacent side to that exposed after removingthe base-lid. So, in other words, it’s a royal begger to remove it now – only to have to do it again later when any replacement arrives later (aside from the risk of damaging screen & other ribbn cables on the Motherboard – all f which has to be completely released from the case to replace the RAM & add / replace storage). As the 2nd drive is merely for storage, in fact, at the price I’ve paid, with the performance it’s ACTUALLY delivering, as another reviewer says (“TJ”); its quick enough for almost all tasks. I have to say though, MS Flight Sim 2020 Premium De-Luxe does take a wee-while to load (on my Desktop) which runs from a Crucual 2TB MX500 so, this should load quicker (except that the CPU in the laptop is an i7 rather than a 10th Gen i9 so perhaps I can;t expect better data throughput becuase of the class of machiens I’m using). So all in all, I guess I’m happy-ish! It would have been nice to have seen 2500/2600 read speeds as per my Sammy immediately exceeding stated performace but hey-ho! Formatted space (NTFS) is exactly 1.8Tb as reported by Win10 21h1 build. 1 final note, mine had a sticker saying “Amazon Warehouse” on it; it MAY have been pre-opened – but owing to reasons above, I deciced to crack on with installation – but I will be complaining to Amazon abou that – as it was a new / pristine model I bought! ** Update **, when buying I had 2 options; new but imported, import duty & deposit fees taken up-front – which was 2/3 cheaper but delivered 1 day later, or a NEW one – a day earlier – like I say – both New (I’d swear) but now I check the order history; it does say “Used – Like New” so I kicked off a lil at Amazon & they’ve given me 20% as if it was a Warehouse special, which I think is faor enough (as the special price on this seems to have ended now anyway). I just need to know how to determine how used it really is. I guess lightly but you never know! Caveat emptor folk!

After running out of system drive space on my server running multiple virtual machines, I decided it was time just to splash out on a bigger SSD. Unfortunately I’ve used all 4 SATA connectors… Fortunately, I spotted this PC I bought had 2x NVME slots – happy days….
So after a bit of investigation I decided to get this 1TB WD blue drive.
Installation in theory is pretty simple – you just plug the drive into the slot and… it just sticks up… turns out you need to rest the drive on a special M2 sized nut which needs to be screw into the motherbord. a tiny bolt then needs to pinch the drive into position…
However searching around, I couldn’t find any such fittings in the SSD packaging box. With full panic, I eventually found that the PC I’d bought pre-built had a couple of spare ones in a bag.
So be aware – NO M2 FITTINGS INCLUDED – you need to ensure you have your own, or buy some.

Once in place, I fired up the PC, partititioned the new disk and it’s ready to go. I copied my Virtual machines over off the system drive and everything works just perfectly.
The drive is fast compared to what I’m used to (you can see the 200+ MB write speed, but that’ll be bottlenecked by the Maxtor SATA SSD it’s copying from).

At 84, these NVME SSDs are just getting cheaper and cheaper, and represent great value for what you get in terms of performance.
So initial impressions, I’m very impressed full recommendation from me!
I will update this review over time should there be any significant developments.

Oh one other thing, I’ve stuck a heatsink onto it (I’ll review that separately).

As above, for a PCI-E Gen 3 device, it’s not the speediest drive, but it does offer TLC DRAM, runs cool and is single sided (an important point that all too often is overlooked in spec sheets). My laptop requires a single sided NVME as a double sided drive won’t fit unless you turn the drive into a banana and force it into place.
Value for money at time of writing is good, although SSD prices fluctuate wildly. Although it’s slower than many others, it’s also cheaper, and in my use case I really don’t notice the speed difference (realistically, the operating system probably takes one extra second to boot than the Samsung Evo drive that was in there before – the Samsung benchmarks significantly faster than the WD).
Benchmarks aren’t everything. Unless you’re planning to move a lot of data around on a regular basis, this drive will more than likely be more than adequate for your usage.

Great price for the product, however, a few things to be aware of if you’re trying to replace an existing hard drive through cloning. One of the reasons I bought this is because it came with Acronis software (WD paired back version).

If you’re going to put into an external hard drive caddy, ensure they are compatible with an “M” key, as some caddy’s are not compatible. You’ll need to format the drive in Disk Manager (Windows 10) to allow you to use it, or attempt a drive clone.
With regards to the caddy, be careful which ones you buy as they sometimes mask the drive, so when you’re trying to clone using the WD version of Acronis, it can’t see the WD drive therefore you can’t use the cloning software! Very frustrating and WD support are useless.
The way around it is to create a USB bootable media, put the new WD drive in your laptop/desktop, and the old drive you’re cloning into the caddy (will need a new caddy if you’re replacing a standard SSD or HDD). Change the boot method in BIOS to the bootable media and then you can clone your drives.
Quite convoluted, but ultimately works.

I really like WD’s products and have found them to be very reliable so I bought one of their SN550 Blue M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs which I knew would give a hugely significant performance boost (see images for comparison: before and after) as before I had a 1TB WD HDD which came with my Dell Inspiron 5570. The storage capacity (250GB) of this new SSD is perfect for my needs as I don’t store any of my personal data on it (it is purely for the operating system and programs alone). I use the original 1TB WD HDD that came with my laptop for all of my personal data as it has a 2.5″ HDD bay and also an M.2 slot so I can have dual drives. You can opt for a bigger version of this model such as 500GB or 1TB if you require more space.

This was incredibly easy to install, all I had to do was remove the back cover of my laptop, then locate the M.2 drive bay slot, insert the drive into the slot the correct way around and then screw the screw into the other end to secure it (my laptop came with this screw already inside, depending on your make and model, you may need to purchase a screw as well).

You can then either clone your disk (copy everything that was on the pervious disk you used) using software such as Macrium Reflect (free for home use) or Acronis True Image (30-day free trial) or if you’re like me and want a complete fresh start you can install Windows 10 with a bootable USB drive which you can create using Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool on their website. Once you’ve installed Windows 10, it should automatically activate as your product key stays with the computer even if just some of the components are replaced such as the RAM and SSD.

Overall, I would highly recommend this SN550 Blue M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD from WD as it offers great performance for a reasonable price. Upgrading your memory and SSD are the two most significant upgrades you can make to your laptop/PC to improve performance and efficiency.