After officially closing on the SanDisk acquisition earlier this year, it looks like Western Digital is reaping the benefits of the acquisition with the introduction two new SSDs – the WD Blue and WD Green SSD.
WD Blue
The WD Blue SSD is WD’s mainstream offering, similar to what we get from their HDD lineup. Powered by a Marvell 88SS1074 controller paired with SanDisk 15nm TLC flash, the WD Blue is capable of performance up to 545 MB/s sequential reads and 525 MB/s sequential writes. Random read/write performance is expected to reach up to 100K/80K IOPS.
The WD Blue SSD will be offered in capacities of 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. The WD Blue SSD will include a 3 year warranty with a variable endurance rating of 100, 200, and 400TBW for the 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities respectively. WD will offer the WD Blue SSD at $79.99 for the 250GB capacity, $139.99 for the 500GB capacity and $299.99 for the 1TB capacity.
The WD Blue SSD is currently available on WD’s website here.
WD Green
The WD Green will fill out WD’s entry level SSD lineup. The WD Green will feature a Silicon Motion SM2256S controller paired with SanDisk 15nm TLC NAND. Sequential performance is rated at up to 540 MB/s sequential reads and 465 MB/s sequential writes. Random read/write performance is rated at up to 37K/68K.
The WD Green will be available in capacities of just 120GB and 240GB. The drives will feature a 3 year warranty, but endurance ratings will be just 40TBW for the 120GB model and 80TBW on the 240GB model. Pricing is still unavailable at this time. WD expects to begin shipping the WD Green later this quarter.
