By: Jonathan Kwan
November 16, 2018
"What is the difference between a PDF file and a pedophile?" a Grade 6 kid asked me. I was a little dumbfounded given I have personally never thought of this question before. "You can be safe around one and not the other," I replied. Sometimes, you have to give it to little boys to draw two completely unrelated things to one another, and regardless of what is on his mind, he certainly got the pronunciations right. Thankfully, there is little correlation between the two beyond that, even if they sound similar to a certain extent. About three years ago, I took a look at the Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB hard drive. In the WD6001FZWX review, I said "the latest flagship consumer drive from Western Digital is seriously fast for a mechanical hard drive" and it was "delivered with class-leading performance for power desktop users". Today, we will take a look at the Western Digital Black NVMe SSD 1TB. While they are both called Western Digital Black, in the same way there is little correlation between a PDF file and a pedophile, these two products could not be more dissimilar. The Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB was a big and heavy 3.5" mechanical hard drive that runs hot and sucks power at 7,200 RPM, while the Western Digital Black NVMe SSD 1TB is a slim M.2 2280 NVMe solid state drive that does not even require an external power connector. But will the latest from Western Digital continue to take home the performance crown among its solid state peers? Read on to find out!
Our review unit of the Western Digital Black NVMe SSD 1TB solid state drive arrived in a small brown corrugated cardboard box from the company's American headquarters in Irvine, California, USA. Using UPS Saver service, it only took a day to get to us given there are tons of direct flights from the Los Angeles area to Calgary, Alberta, Canada. As always, everything arrived in excellent condition for our review today, so I got straight to work.
Given every internal storage product I have received from Western Digital was sent in OEM packaging, the Black NVMe SSD 1TB marks a rare exception in our history of reviews here at APH Networks. This is not to say I have never seen a Western Digital retail box -- the My Passport Wireless Pro 2TB came featured in the company's signature colors -- but the My Passport Wireless Pro was an external storage product. As you can see in our photo above, the Black NVMe SSD 1TB's retail box comes in a name-appropriate black and white color scheme. The company's branding can be seen prominently displayed at the top along with the "high performance NVMe SSD" product description. Under it, you can see a 3/4 shot of the SSD itself. Three logos at the bottom indicate its 1TB capacity, 3D NAND flash chips, and 5-year warranty. Meanwhile, at the bottom left corner, the company wants you to know the Black can pull up to 3400MB/s in read throughput.
Before we move on, let us take a look at the features and specifications of the Western Digital Black NVMe SSD 1TB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Capacity: 1TB
Interface: PCIe Gen3 8 Gb/s, up to 4 lanes
Form Factor: M.2 2280
Sequential Read/Write:
- Up to 3,400 MB/s Read
- Up to 2,800 MB/s Write
Random Read/Write:
- Up to 500,000 IOPS Read
- Up to 400,000 IOPS Write
Other than the SSD itself, you will find nothing else included from the factory. Clipped on the clear plastic tray is the Western Digital Black NVMe SSD 1TB with a warranty insert. Although this is a performance product, SSDs are a mainstream commodity in 2018, and this is evidence to the state of things. For what it is worth, I do not know what else you can expect, haha.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion
