By: Jonathan Kwan
July 12, 2024
I was helping out with youth camp for my church a few months ago. At the camp, different groups were assigned to different duties on different days. My group of boys were assigned to cleaning all the tables and washing everyone's lunches after dinner on the Saturday, which, for that particular meal, was quite an operation -- I estimate we had to process over four hundred items for the five of them. There were three sinks and two faucets in the kitchen, and while the guys in my group were quite eager to work, it was completely chaotic at first because they had no idea what they were doing. As such, I reorganized them into a proper production line, where the person on the first sink did the pre-soak, the person on the second sink added detergent and scrubbed the items, the person on the third sink rinsed, fourth person did the drying, and the last person put everything back to where they belong. It was a well-defined process that was efficiently laid out, and things began to move quickly. However, soon after we begun, we saw the kid responsible for putting things away was scrolling on his phone. All the other boys noticed this and asked him what he was doing, to which he claimed he had "nothing to do". I chuckled at the stack of dishes next to him before someone looked at him and yelled, "OPEN YOUR EYES!" Another camp counselor and I bursted out laughing at this scene, and the kid on the phone quickly got back to work. Sometimes, we need to open our eyes to see what is going on, whether it is obvious or not. A few years ago, I reviewed the WD_BLACK SN770 1TB, a budget performance SSD I said was "unbelievably fast [...] in common day-to-day usage scenarios at a very affordable price". Fast forward two years, and we got something that carries an almost identical name, the WD_BLACK SN770M. The "M" designation means it is in the M.2 2230 form factor for portable gaming devices and ultrathin laptops. But are there more differences under the hood that requires us to "open [our] eyes", and will such differences, if exists, translate to anything in the benchmarks? Read on to find out!
Our review unit of the Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770M 2TB arrived in a medium-sized brown corrugated cardboard shipping box from a local print shop in Tustin, California, USA. Tustin is a city in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Using UPS Expedited, the package arrived on our doorstep here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in excellent condition for our review today.
Like other WD_BLACK series SSDs I have reviewed from the company like the SN770 NVMe SSD 1TB, the SN770M 2TB came in retail packaging. Its retail box comes in a name-appropriate black and white color scheme. The company's branding can be seen subtly displayed in courier font in the background. In the foreground, you will find the product name and description at the top left corner in a more traditional font. The overall design looks quite edgy for a traditional and conservative company like Western Digital, which is a great thing in my opinion. On top of it, you can see a 3/4 shot of the SSD itself. You can see its 2TB capacity specification, Gen 4 interface, and up to 5150MB/s rate read speed near the bottom right corner. Feature highlights and a list of contents can be found at the back of the box.
Before we move on, let us take a look at the specifications of the Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770M 2TB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Capacity: 2TB
Form Factor: M.2 2230
Connector: M.2
Compatibility:
- Computer with M.2 (M-key) port, capable of taking M.2 2230 form factor
- Windows® 10+
Sequential Read Performance: 5150MB/s
Sequential Write Performance: 4850MB/s
Random Read: 650K IOPS
Random Write: 800K IOPS
Interface: PCIe Gen4 x4
In The Box: WD_BLACK SN770M M.2 2230 NVMe SSD
Warranty: 5-Year Limited Warranty
Endurance (TBW): 1200
Dimensions (L x W x H): 1.18" x 0.87" x 0.09"
Weight: 2.8gms
Model Number: WDBDNH0020BBK-WRSN
Operating Temperature: 32°F to 185°F
Non-Operating Temperature: -40°F to 185°F
Opening the box reveals the Western Digital WD_BLACK SN770M 2TB itself placed on a transparent plastic tray behind a sealed clear plastic shell and a warranty guide. This is it -- out of the box, you will get the absolutely bare minimum. Not that we need anything else, of course.
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 8.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
7. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 10
8. Benchmark: PCMark 10
9. Benchmark: 3DMark
10. Conclusion
