Western Digital WD Black NVMe SSD Review

Western Digital is a still is a major player in the storage market, but when it comes to solid state drives WD has not really broken into the gaming and enthusiast market that well. Their current solid state drive offering was late to the game by all accounts and was not all that impressive given what else is out there. Being late to the game and not having those high-performance parts that gamers and enthusiasts want has made way for other companies (specifically Samsung) to dominate this market. Well today Western Digital is releasing a high-performance NVMe SSD that is targeted directly at gamers. It is the WD Black NVMe SSD, which has been built completely in house by Western Digital and boasts read and write speeds of 3400 MB/s and 2800 MB/s respectively. Is this the new must-have NVMe SSD for gamers and enthusiasts? Read on as we find out…

Special thanks to WD for providing us with the WD Black NVMe SSD to review.

Specifications
wd specs

Pricing & Availability
wd pricing

Packaging
For those who do not know WD acquired SanDisk back in 2016. So with the WD Black NVMe SSD there will also be a SanDisk Extreme PRO NVMe SSD. Both are the same product, but marketed towards different types of users. The WD drive is for gamers and enthusiasts, whereas the SanDisk drive is for creatives and content creators. So we will be showing off the SanDisk drive alongside the WD drive. On the front of each package we have photos of each drive and it lets us know the speed as well as capacity.

Western Digital WD Black NVMe SSD

Flipping over to the back we have a little cutout that shows we are indeed getting what is on the box and a little bit of information on the drive itself.

Western Digital WD Black NVMe SSD

The drives are packaged in a clamshell-like plastic package. All you are going to find is the drive itself and a warranty guide.

Western Digital WD Black NVMe SSD

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