WD Blue SN570 review

The WD Blue SN570 – almost begging to be confused with the SN750 – comes to the M.2 SSD scene to try taking the reins as the value champ. This SSD comes in capacities ranging from 250GB for $53 (about £40, AU$75) up to a 2TB capacity for $239 (about £175, AU$330), proving fairly affordable across the range. We’ve even started seeing discounts that shave 10% to 20% off.

Before the value of this drive gets too hyped up, we should note that this is only a PCIe 3.0 x4 drive, so it has bandwidth limitations that see it lag far behind the many PCIe 4.0 x4 drives that are storming the market. So let’s take a look at the speeds and put things in perspective.

The WD Blue SN570 performs great for its class. We see sequential read speeds of 3,617MB/s and sequential writes of 3,195MB/s on the 1TB model that we tested. Those speeds come out ahead of WD’s own suggested ratings. The drive performs admirably in random operations as well, hitting 1,892MB/s reads and 1,867MB/s writes in CrystalDiskMark with a queue depth of 32. Those sequential speeds see it outclass Samsung 980, which lacks a DRAM cache, but actually fall slightly behind Samsung’s drive for random operations — an area Samsung’s drives continue to hold strong even as they lag behind in sequential performance.

Unfortunately for Western Digital, Samsung isn’t leading the pack when it comes to speeds or value.  The SK Hynix Gold P31 is faster on almost all counts, only lagging in sequential reads by 15MB/s.  Meanwhile, it comes in at roughly the same price and has twice the endurance. WD warrants the SN570 for 600 drive writes (i.e., 600 TBW for the 1TB drive), while SK Hynix offers double that for the P31 Gold. 

Matters only get worse when we start taking the market of PCIe 4.0 drives into account, especially as some older models have come down in price. PNY’s XLR8 CS3040 is a middling PCIe 4.0 SSD, but it can still hit 5,600MB/s reads and 4,300MB/s writes, well beyond the speeds of the SN570, and it costs about the same for a 1TB drive and even undercuts the SN570 for a 2TB drive. It’s a very similar story for the Silicon Power US70. 

Even higher grade Gen 4 SSDs are starting to become more affordable, like the Silicon Power XS70, which is boasting 7,300MB/s sequential reads and 6,800MB/s writes (about as fast as they come and more than double the speeds of the SN570). You’d think a drive like that would cost a lot more than the SN570, but a 1TB model will only be $20 more and a 2TB model will only be $10. That’s a small premium to pay for a huge uplift in performance, not to mention an additional 100-drive-writes worth of endurance.

The WD Blue SN570 only finds a safe haven at its 500GB capacity, where it avoids some of the fiercer competition from faster drives and maintains its exceptional 10-cents-per-gigabyte value. Given how barren the drive is (more than half of the PCB is empty), it’s a surprise WD didn’t opt for a smaller M.2 2242 form factor to cater to laptop (or Steam Deck) customers. 

Should I buy the WD Blue SN570?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...