Western Digital Introduces SATA SSDs in Blue and Green Series

Western Digital is introducing two series of SSDs in 2.5″ and m2 form factor. The Green series will be available with models with a capacity of 120 and 240GB. The Blue series consists of SSDs from 250GB to 1TB. These are SATA SSDs and for now, WD doesn’t offer nvme ssds yet.

The introduction of WD’s SSDs comes five months after the company completed its acquisition of SanDisk. Both the Green and Blue SSDs use SanDisk’s 15nm TLC Nand memory and are based on existing SSDs from the same manufacturer.

In terms of specifications, the WD Blue SSDs match the SanDisk X400 series. Those SSDs are equipped with a Marvell 88SS1074 controller. The Western Digital SSDs have capacities of 250, 500 and 1000GB, while the SanDisk variants offer 256, 512 and 1024GB. Because the WD variants have more overprovisioning, the SSDs should last longer. AnandTech has tested the 1TB variant of the WD Blue SSD and concluded that some weaknesses of the SanDisk alternative have been addressed, but at the expense of speed. The differences are caused by modified firmware in the WD SSD compared to the SanDisk alternative.

With the Green SSDs, WD aims at the lower segment of the market. According to AnandTech, the budget SSDs contain an SM2256S controller with no dram cache. The specifications correspond to the existing SSDs from the SanDisk SSD Plus series. The difference is that WD also comes with m2 variants and only offers models with a capacity of 120 and 240GB. SanDisk already had a model with 480GB in its range, but only offers the Plus SSDs in 2.5″ format.

According to Hardware.Info, which was present at the presentation of the SSDs, the WD Green SSD with a capacity of 240GB will have a suggested retail price of 89 euros. The price of the 120GB model is unknown. WD Blue SSDs are available from 99 euros for 250GB; the model with 1TB storage capacity costs 339 euros in 2.5″ format. The variants in m2 form factor are 10 euros more expensive. The SSDs should be on the market this week.

The acquisition of SanDisk by WD involved an amount of 16.7 billion euros. SanDisk has been making SSDs for a long time, and the introduction of the WD SSDs doesn’t have to mean that they will disappear from the market. Western Digital has indicated at the acquisition that SanDisk will continue to exist as a brand within the group.