Final Thoughts
With what I call the second generation of Gen4 NVMe solid state drives we’ve had a lot of entries in the space already and it does seem that Western Digital is a little late to the party with the WD Black SN850X, but if you haven’t picked up a Gen4 drive yet this drive I would say was worth the wait. When it comes to pure raw performance this drive us up there with all of the latest Gen4 drives that we’ve tested, but never took the top spot in any of our speed tests. In CrystalDiskMark we saw a read speed of 6970.12 MB/s and a write speed of 6689.79 MB/s,
Like most Gen4 drives these days you can pick the WD Black SN850X either with a heatsink or without one. While we reviewed the version without the heatsink the one with the heatsink looks awesome, especially since they added some lighting to the heatsink. The heatsink version is definitely going to be the smart choice if you plan on using the drive in a PlayStation 5 console.
WD’s SSD Dashboard software is one of the better SSD Toolbox software package’s we’ve seen. It easily allows you to see all of the information on your drive, update firmware, and even turn the new Game Mode 2.0 on.
Like most high-performance drives, Western Digital backs this drive with a 5-year warranty which is good to see. Right now you can pick up the 2TB version of the drive that we reviewed today for $229.99, with the 1TB being $134.99. This is also one of the few drives that has a 4TB available early on with that drive being $494. Overall ThinkComputers gives the WD Black SN850X Gen4 NVMe Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Great overall performance
– SSD Dashboard software
– Available in heatsink and non-heatsink versions
– 4TB unit available
Cons:
– Not the fastest Gen4 drive we’ve tested
