WD ssds, yay or nay?

[NorthboundOcclusive]

is there any general opinion on western digital's new SSD line? havent seen any reviews on hardOCP, and the couple other sites i follow for this sort of thing. i do recall hearing they bought up sandisk, are these just a rebrand of former-sandisk products? (not that that's necessarily a bad thing)
pc hound ranks the 250gb 2.5" model at #20, and the 500gb version looks to be one of the cheapest options for that capacity (vs say an 850EVO)
would replace an existing 500gb 5400rpm WD Blue in my laptop

 

[arestavo]

Unless you're doing database work or video editing (and not just gaming), the only true differences for an average user is the warranty and the price. Those WD Black m.2 drives carry a 5 year warranty, which is just fine in my book. They aren't the cheapest, and they aren't the most expensive.

I say yay.

 

[Iratus]

Sandisk drives were ok and these are just their next release. With Sandisk I found their performance dropped off more over time than my Samsung ones but a disk refresh brought them back. It's probably not as bad anymore as two of those drives were almost 5 years old (though only 3tb written)

Did lose a few to a bad cable which is a new one on me but have been fine since replacing them. As arestevo says, most are pretty similar these days. The controllers are generally similar and the performance differences are meaningless in the context of real life.

They are tier 1, so it's their own memory rather than oem'd, that might be a plus, but generally I'd say if the price is right hop on. Samsung's main advantage with the 3D nand is largely a capacity and price one but it's generally a benefit to them (higher margins) rather than customers on all but the largest drives.

 

[Atari911]

Ive put a couple of the WD Blue SSDs into workstations and they seem to be just fine. If you are not worried about the warranty (I think its still 3-years which is pretty good) and the machine is not mission critical, I would say yay.