Comments Locked

75 Comments

Back to Article

  • TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    it's an interesting drive, but why buy these when the likes of the mushkin reactor are $60 cheaper for the 1TB varient? sata III drives have peaked performance wise.

    OTOH, cant wait to see what the WD black SSDs look like. 4TB? M.2 PCIE?
  • dave_the_nerd - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    The Reactor 1TB was a clone of the BX100... which outperformed the WD Blue in a lot of tests here. Getting harder to find them though.

    Hopefully the street price of this will be more in-line with the rest of the market, price/performance wise.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    the only thing this WD drive does better is write endurance. 400TB, or even 320TB for the sandisk version, is a heck of a lot better then the 144TB of the 1TB reactor drive.
  • ammacdo - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    The thing I like most about this review is seeing how well my BX100 still holds up, and I paid the same MSRP this one is going for over a year ago.
  • paulgj - Monday, October 31, 2016 - link

    I agree, I bought half a dozen BX100's when they went on sale. Excellent MLC SSDs.
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    It depends on the consistency of performance and not the peak

    The concern I have is Sandisk consistency of performance which cannot be checked using a single test drive

    I have 3 of the Sandisk Extreme Pro thumbdrives that are Windows to Go compatible as they are "Fixed Disks"

    One of them is completely unusable after a week, one is so-so and one is very good (performance wise)

    The only thing that will return the speed to "Like-New" condition is using Killdisk over the entire drive

    The CrapCleaner Drive wipe utility does not return full performance, and the new Defraggler SSD Optimizer does not return full performance

    I have not found any method other than Killdisk to temporarily regain full disk performance

    Of course, not having Trim or Garbage collection exacerbates the problem which then accelerates the thermal throttling issue

    Mushkin also has a bad rep for thermal issues on their Win2Go compatible thumbdrives

    The new Corsair GTX beats them all hands down for Windows to go and since my test machine is an older Sandy Bridge for XP compatability, the corsair is actually faster on the USB3 port than my Samsung 850 Pro is on the SATA2 ports

    I hope Anandtech can address consistency between identical drives at some point
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Corsair GTX Thumb drives seem VERY Consistent between drives as well
  • Wwhat - Sunday, October 30, 2016 - link

    You seem to be a pretty unique case and not an average user in any way.
    But it's still an interesting comment I feel. Or I should say 'because of that' rather than 'still'.
  • Bulat Ziganshin - Saturday, October 15, 2016 - link

    they can't build Black from air. sandisk best ssd is extreme pro, so Black will be updated version of it
  • nathanddrews - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Does this WD SSD come with software to clone/shrink your existing drive to the new SSD? I have an older SiliconEdge Blue 64GB SSD (still working well) and WD offers a utility on their website to do just that, but only if there is a WD drive attached to the machine. I assume this utility would work with this SSD? Not sure if you image your test drives using different tools or what.

    Samsung has another great utility that comes with a slick SATA-to-USB 3.0 dongle (free in the box) that will clone/shrink any drive to a target Samsung SSD. They go above and beyond the capabilities of Windows volume shrink by a lot.
  • Decoherent - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    There aren't a lot of reasons to use vendor-specific software (which often sucks) when you can use Macrium Reflect's free version, which is much more powerful. It's helped me sort out some other weird problems, too, such as fixing wrong UEFI entries that I couldn't figure out.
  • jwcalla - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I don't think I would trust WD anything when it comes to storage.
  • BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Why not? This is just a SanDisk drive with a few minor firmware tweaks. Besides that, WD was the industry leader before SSDs were a thing. Sure picking between Seagate, Quantum, Maxtor (omg that 4.3GB Bigfoot drive...how I missed your 3 months of dog slow performance before you started making the click o' death), and WD (I guess Toshiba and Hitachi too) was like picking between which rusty razor you'd prefer to slit your wrist with, but at least with WD drives you clould get a good gusher going before the blade broke.
  • LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I loved the Quantum Bigfoot, it was as great way to increase capacity for storage drives without having to wait for aerial density to increase.
  • BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Oh the idea was sound. Going back to a 5.25 inch chassis to increase capacity seemed like a decent idea even though we'd long ago shifted to 3.5 inch drives. The problem with the Bigfoot was reliability. I had one I personally owned die on me and quite a few we sold to customers (12GB models) came back dead within less than 6 months. I remember all the hassles of getting RMAs done for those things. On the other hand, Quantum's 3.5 inch drives seemed fairly reliable. I wonder if there was a problem with heat expansion doing bad things to the read/write heads due to the larger platter size. It wasn't a problem with older 5.25 inch hard drives because they were usually full height and ran at a lower RPM than the Bigfoots.
  • LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I don't even remember what speed they ran at. Was it the full 5400rpm, or something slower like 5200 or 4900?
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    I don't remember all the specs and had to look them up. The originals and the CY series ran at 3600 RPM and the TX, and TS series brought it up to 4000. If I recall correctly, when the Bigfoot was still in retail channels, a lot of 3.5 inch drives were ticking along at 3600 to 4200 RPM. 5400 RPM drives came along later and I don't know if Bigfoots were even in production when they were being sold as high performance storage solutions (well, non-SCSI drives anyhow...spindle speeds for SCSI devices were quite a bit higher).

    This is half from memory and the rest was from a couple of quick web searches so take all that with a grain of salt or two. I could be a bit off as it's been a long time.
  • mikato - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    "I don't think I would trust anything when it comes to storage."
    That's better. Have backups that work.

    But anyway, why all the dumping on WD? I don't think it is warranted.
  • barleyguy - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    There have been many periods in the past where WD had very high failure rates. Because of that, many of us that have been around awhile have been bit in the butt by WD and don't trust them anymore. In the late 90s and early 2000s for instance, WD's failure rate was so high they had a wait queue and callback system set up for RMAs.

    That said, I think for last few years WD has been very good, so maybe it is unwarranted in the short term.

    In particular I really like the WD Blue. They aren't fast, but they seem to be a very reliable drive, and throwing them in a RAID array with an SSD boot disk results in a pretty solid system.
  • Gigaplex - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Their main competitor, Seagate, has also had very high failure rates. Mikato was correct, don't trust any of them. There's no need to dump on WD more than the others.
  • HollyDOL - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    Indeed, all those companies had hiccups, but out of those two long term RMAing rate at friend's computer shop for Seagate is almost double of WD's (like... it was 9% of sold WD and 18% of sold Seagates, numbers being example, not actual ones).

    Then againt, it's 7 weeks since I had WD Red failure & RMAing.

    so... backup, backup, backup and then again backup...
  • mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    Never ceases to amaze me the number of business users I come across that have no backup of any of their systems or data at all.
  • jamyryals - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Wow, I didn't realize the 1TB prices had come down so much. Pretty awesome
  • Impulses - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    Prices haven't budged much in over a year, I paid $300-ish (ea.) for 2x 1TB EVOs back around the Skylake launch, well over a year ago... The X400 was already cheaper at the time, but I was fine with the slight premium for the faster EVO. WD is basically launching an average to sub average drive at nearly the price point that an EVO has held for 12+ months...
  • mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    In some cases they've gone way up. The 850 EVO was pretty cheap in Jan/16, since when it's skyrocketed.
  • Jad77 - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Lets hope the Black drives, when they make an appearance, are NVMe - in U.2 and M.2 form factors.
  • plopke - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I would say my experience with WD is about 3/5 and sandisk 4/5 and I mean the complete picture product quality,product description,price,support,drivers,firmware,....

    Curious how this take over will go , how they will use sandisk brand name and knowledge. I fear it will become a typical , safe cost because of the purchase , dropped support for products , confused technical support people ,.... but I can always hope.
  • cknobman - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I think you have a typo in your charts, the 1TB drive is showing $299.

    Other outlets are listing it as $199.
  • Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I just double-checked with WD and it's definitely $299. If anyone has it listed at $199, then that would seem to be in error.
  • cknobman - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Yep you are correct. Thanks!

    Now I'm sad, deep down I knew $199 was too good to be true :(
  • Arbie - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I agree with another comment. Why is the Mushkin Reactor 1TB not in the charts for recent SSD reviews? At $230 it's cheaper than many, is MLC, and overall seems like a great buy. You reviewed it but then seem to have forgotten it.
  • DanNeely - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I'm a bit puzzled by the performance consistency numbers here. In them the WD Blue 1TB seems to be consistently faster than the Sandisk X400 1TB before reaching steady state and about the same speed once it hits that point; but in almost all the other benches the Sandisk scores higher.
  • Billy Tallis - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    The drive is completely filled once before the random write consistency test, which runs at QD32. Most of the other IOmeter scores are averages of low queue depths, and the random write test on page 6 is limited to a 16GB test file on an otherwise empty drive. Whatever effect caused the WD Blue to have lower peak performance is more significant for the shorter test, while for the consistency test the fact that the WD Blue has more spare area to start with than the X400 is a bigger factor.
  • kmmatney - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I bought a SanDisk Ultra II 960GB drive about a year ago for around $200, and it's still close to that price ($219 at the moment). It's the one with SLC cache - I use it in my everyday work computer, as my OS drive, and I typically run 1-2 virtual machines as well. So I push it fairly hard for a consumer SSD, and it still runs great - no complaints at all, and I'd recommend it for the price.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link

    Same experience here. In a few weeks it will be a year of use for me, and if Sandisk utility is to be trusted, it`s only 1% worn.
  • mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    It's a pity the X300 is not available anymore, it had very good consistency and at one point was cheaper than many budget models.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    It is amazing that they fit all that on one side of the board without so much as a capacitor on the back...
  • LordConrad - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    Sorry, I refuse to buy a SSD that uses TLC planar NAND.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    why? these have higher write endurance then some MLC drives.
  • MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    That was quick - WD releasing an SSD under their own name. Sure it is a warmed over X400, but as the performance numbers indicate they didn't just slap a sticker on it... which leads to my next comment.

    When I read the opening of the article I was pretty excited. X400 with a bit more overprovisioning. I was expecting to see extra performance (even if only a little) along with the endurance. I guess not. Oh well.
  • DigitalFreak - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    I'd pay the extra $6 for the 1TB 850 Evo, which preforms much better.
  • vladx - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    I'd rather pay $50 less for the Sandisk X400 than to spend an addiitional $56 for some benchmark points that are hardly relevant to real world experience
  • TheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    in a heavily used system, those "extra points" can mean more then just a high score.
  • vladx - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    For a heavily used system, you buy a Samsung 850 Pro or PCIe SSD.
  • Impulses - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    The EVOs do go on sale somewhat often... I can see paying a premium for them either way, but I definitely wouldn't pay an extra large premium for the Pro, at that point you might as well go PCI-E/M.2 IMO... Unless it's a really fringe case where you need both the fastest+largest consumer drive available and price (or leaving performance on the table) isn't a concern.
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Saturday, October 15, 2016 - link

    Extra large premium for the Pro???

    I require a minimum of 160GB for my Boot Drives in my test Rigs so I need 250 - 256GB SSD's minimum

    Lets look at the Huge Premium at Newegg for the 256GB 850 Pro shall we

    Oct 15 2016
    850 EVO / 250GB $99.99 OUT OF STOCK
    850 Pro / 256GB $123 IN STOCK

    850 EVO warranty 3 years
    850 Pro warranty 10 years

    850 EVO TLC Nand
    850 Pro MLC Nand (40nm process)

    Firmware problems
    850 EVO ???
    850 Pro None

    Would anyone here spend more than the difference in price between these 2 SSD's just for an extended warranty on an EVO?

    The better buy is the Pro!
    It also has much better compatability with various Operating Systems than PCIe / M.2 SSDs

    I'm using mine for Windows XP / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 and Linux Mint
    Try running any OS that is not a DRM Spyware Platform on your precious M.2 drive
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Sunday, October 16, 2016 - link

    Apparently it was only the 840 EVO that had firmware problems so the 850 EVO firmware appears to be fine and neither the 850 EVO or Pro has burst into flames yet
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link

    Linux loves my 950 pro. So yeah.
  • Magichands8 - Tuesday, October 11, 2016 - link

    What a disappointment. Yet another low capacity, highly priced SSD permanently crippled by the SATA interface... just like all the other SSDs we've been presented with for years and years. Not touching this with a 10 foot pole.
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    Unless you edit videos, no one noticies the 2GB/s+ speeds unless for e-pen1s rights.
  • Magichands8 - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    That's funny you should say that since I've been noticing it for years. Every single time I move around large files to reorganize or back them up, in fact. But I'm sure that I'm the only non-video editing person on the planet who doesn't use his computer exclusively for reading and writing tiny text files and browsing the internet. I'm also sure that I'm the only who would have a problem paying a premium for very low capacity devices just so I could experience their limitations.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, October 13, 2016 - link

    Oy vey, nobody in the market cares for my special snowflake wants, it`s anudda shoah!
  • mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    You need more explosions in your posts. ;D
  • beginner99 - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    It's cheap but not really excitingly cheap. Doesn't really beat the aged MX200 which also comes with MLC NAND which I deem superior to this TLC low-end crap. Only advantage this has over MX200 is price. Good for a cheapo game-drive maybe but would avoid as OS drive.
  • Arnulf - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    Ewww, 15nm planar TLC along with WD branding.
  • JimmiG - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    I remember the time when the 850 Evo was considered a "budget" SSD. Now it's almost a high-end SSD.
  • haukionkannel - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    And the price of evo is still going up. Hopefully there will be stop to it eventually.
  • Impulses - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    It's not really going up, just plateau'ing hard, sales might be happening slightly less frequently lately, I dunno... I do remember seeing the 1TB under $300 a number of times but it's mostly been just over $300 for well over a year.

    I paid $320-ish for two back in July-August 2015 when they were first starting to get close to $300. It's still faster than the field and brand alone is probably sustaining their ability to charge a premium.
  • mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    Maybe it depends on where you live, but the 850 EVO went up a lot where I am (UK). Back in Jan this year the 250GB was 53 UKP, now the same model is 85 UKP. Samsung is exploiting demand for what used to be a well priced, reliable product to give the model a premium image that's pushing its cost far above where it really should be. This has happened before, eg. when the 830 series shot up in early 2013 after strong demand, which helped ensure all other brands didn't lower their prices.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    what HASNT shot up in price in the UK post-Brexit vote?
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    This article need a "The Rock" pic

    Finally, HDD vendors make it back to consumer hearts, with an SSD.
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    The Mushkin Reactor is still a champ if you don't wanna go for the 850Pro.
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    I think you only got 3-4 options for SSD's.

    Samsung 850Pro
    Crucial MX300
    Mushkin Reactor

    *Add Hynix SSD's when they sell the 1TB model.
  • Lolimaster - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    *Samsung 850Pro/EVO

    2016, still no edit button...
  • mapesdhs - Friday, October 14, 2016 - link

    Sad part is we'll be saying the same thing next year.
  • MrGulio - Wednesday, October 12, 2016 - link

    Each time I see a new SSD review it reminds me more and more what a garbage fire the BX200 is.
  • Bulat Ziganshin - Saturday, October 15, 2016 - link

    here in russia samsung 750 and sandisk ultra 2 are good competition too, providing prices comparable to trion 150 devices. but on american amazon they are no better than mx300
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Saturday, October 15, 2016 - link

    Extra large premium for the Pro???

    I require a minimum of 160GB for my Boot Drives in my test Rigs so I need 250 - 256GB SSD's minimum

    Lets look at the Huge Premium at Newegg for the 250/256GB EVO & Pro

    Oct 15 2016
    850 EVO / 250GB $99.99 OUT OF STOCK
    850 Pro / 256GB $123 IN STOCK

    850 EVO warranty 3 years
    850 Pro warranty 10 years

    850 EVO TLC Nand
    850 Pro MLC Nand (40nm process)

    Firmware problems
    850 EVO ???
    850 Pro None

    Would anyone here spend more than the difference in price between these 2 SSD's just for an extended warranty on an EVO?

    The better buy is the Pro!
    It also has much better compatability with various Operating Systems than PCIe / M.2 SSDs

    I'm using mine for Windows XP / Windows 8.1 / Windows 10 and Linux Mint
    Try running any OS that is not a DRM Spyware Platform on your precious M.2 drive
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, October 17, 2016 - link

    linux mint/ubuntu/arch/ece love the 950 pro.
  • SeanJ76 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link

    Intel>all other SSD manufactuers
  • SeanJ76 - Thursday, October 20, 2016 - link

    You couldn't pay me to use a Samsung SSD, not after their S7 ordeal and their screw up on SSD firmware update earlier this year....
  • Bullwinkle J Moose - Friday, October 21, 2016 - link

    Never heard of the firmware screwup earlier this year
    Please provide a link

    and how exactly did the S7 ordeal affect the quality of their new SSD's
    I'd love to hear more!
  • LMF5000 - Tuesday, March 28, 2017 - link

    What I'm seeing in this article is that the Samsung drives vastly outperform everything else (by a factor of 1.5x to 2x in almost all the tests) except for power draw, and yet the price difference is almost negligible (right now my favourite shop is selling the WD blue 250GB for €95.99 and the Samsung 850 Evo for €109.99). Why would anyone buy the WD over the Samsung?

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now