WD Blue 500GB SSD WDS500G1B0A Review

WD has five series of hard drives that are differentiated according to the applications’ need. WD has categorized their storage devices as WD Blue, WD Black, WD Red, WD Purple and WD Gold. The WD blue is for mainstream PCs, WD black is recommended for high end gaming PCs and laptops, WD Red is dedicated for NAS storage devices, WD Purple is for surveillance devices and WD Gold hard drives are designed for enterprise-class reliability, capacity, power efficiency and performance. Besides these, WD also has a series of solid state drives. Today, we have the WD Blue 500GB SSD (WDS500G1B0A) for review which is specifically meant for smaller and thinner computers. WD acquired SanDisk last year and these SSDs come with SanDisk technology.

The WD Blue SSD comes in three storage capacity and all are available in form factor of 2.5” 7mm / M.2 2280.

• WD Blue 250GB
• WD BLue 500GB
• WD Blue 1TB

Detailed Specifications of all WD Blue SSDs given by the company

Specifications	1TB	500GB	250GB
Model Numbers
WD Blue PC SSD 2.5”/7mm cased	WDS100T1B0A	WDS500G1B0A	WDS250G1B0A
WD Blue PC SSD M.2 2280	WDS100T1B0B	WDS500G1B0B	WDS250G1B0B
Interface1, 3
WD Blue PC SSD 2.5”/7mm cased	SATA III 6 Gb/s	SATA III 6 Gb/s	SATA III 6 Gb/s
WD Blue PC SSD M.2 2280	SATA III 6 Gb/s	SATA III 6 Gb/s	SATA III 6 Gb/s
Performance  [4KB QD32]
Sequential Read up to (MB/s)	545	545	540
Sequential Write up to (MB/s)	525	525	500
Random Read up to (IOPS)	100k	100k	97k
Random Write up to (IOPS)	80k	80k	79k
Endurance (TBW)	400	200	100
Power
Avg. Active Power (mW)	70	70	70
Max Read Operating (mW)	2,850	2,850	2,350
Max Write Operating (mW)	4,400	4,000	3,400
Slumber (mW)	45–52	42–46	42–45
DEVSLP (mW)	6.0–9.7	6.0–7.7	4.9–6.0
Reliability
MTTF	Up to 1.75M hours	Up to 1.75M hours	Up to 1.75M hours
Environmental
Operating Temperatures	0°C to 70°C	0°C to 70°C	0°C to 70°C
Non-operating Temperatures	-55°C to 85°C	-55°C to 85°C	-55°C to 85°C
Operating Vibration	5.0 gRMS, 10–2000 Hz	5.0 gRMS, 10–2000 Hz	5.0 gRMS, 10–2000 Hz
Non-operating Vibration	4.9 gRMS, 7–800 Hz	4.9 gRMS, 7–800 Hz	4.9 gRMS, 7–800 Hz
Shock	1,500 G @ 0.5 msec half sine	1,500 G @ 0.5 msec half sine	1,500 G @ 0.5 msec half sine
Certifications	FCC, UL, TUV, KC, BSMI, VCCI	FCC, UL, TUV, KC, BSMI, VCCI	FCC, UL, TUV, KC, BSMI, VCCI
Limited Warranty	3 years	3 years	3 years
Physical Dimensions
Size: 2.5”/7mm cased	7.00mm x 69.85mm x 100.5mm	7.00mm x 69.85mm x 100.5mm	7.00mm x 69.85mm x 100.5mm
Size: M.2 2280	2.38mm x 22.00mm x 80.0mm	2.23mm x 22.00mm x 80.0mm	2.23mm x 22.00mm x 80.0mm
Weight: 2.5”/7mm cased	59.7g	37.4g	37.4g
Weight: M.2 2280	7±1g	7±1g	7±1g

 

WD Blue 500GB SSD- Inside the Box

The things inside the box of WD SSD were only the SSD and nothing else. The SSD inside the box was packed safely in a plastic container. There is no software disk to manage the SSD but the user can download it from WD’s website to perform secure erase and other operation such as monitor your drive’s health.  Unfortunately, this program is only available for Windows. Also, one more is software available on WD’s website which is Acronis True Image WD Edition Software to clone the drive.

As you can see the inside view of the SSD drive shows that the drive uses SanDisk’s NAND technology.

 

WD 500GB Blue SSD Unboxing and Installation Video

WD Blue SSD Performance and Features

The WD Blue 500GB SSD review unit we got was 7mm thick and can easily fit into the laptops designed for 9.5mm hard drives. The weight of the drive was 37.4g and it is very light and feels like it is almost empty due to its small chipset board form factor. The Blue SSDs of WD use the 3D TCL NAND flash memory which is meant for consumers.

The software which WD provides on their website is WD free SSD Dashboard tool to monitor the health of your drive. The software will help to identify the operating temperature of SSD and can create an SMS or email alert on overheating. It also shows the remaining life cycle of your SSD.

The visualization of partitions and its usage can become easier and understandable via this tool and can check overall health, or run a diagnostic test manually.

 

If you think that you’re not getting the performance after installing the SSD then the real-time performance graph provided by this proves handy.

The app also offers a secure way to upgrade the firmware and erasing the content of the SSD.

 

Benchmarks:

To test the WD Blue 500GB SSD drive we used a PC with following configurations:

• Windows 10 64 bit
• Intel i7 -3770K CPU @ 3.50GHz
• 12GB DDR3 memory
• Intel SSD (OS installed) along 4TB Hitachi HDD drive
• Corsair CX500 SMPS

 

We ran a couple of benchmarks to test the WD Blue 500GB SSD and we didn’t get what the company claims. We got maximum reading and writing speed under 400MB/s in our all benchmarks which is almost 145MB/s less of what the company claims. The score for Crystaldiskmark at 500MB of sequential data gave us an average maximum read speed of 352 MB/s and write speed of 392MB/s. The screenshot attached is the lower one and score we mentioned is the average after running it three times.

In the same way just like Crystal disk mark the AS SSD benchmark score was under 400MB/s.

Apart from the benchmark test we also test it in real-world scenario in which we transferred 2.98GB of assorted files and got maximum writing speed of 202MB/s which took around 14.60 seconds.

The SSD performance does not solely depend on the reading and writing speed, power consumption is the other factor when using them in notebooks. The Western Digital Blue SSD was good in our Laptop battery test. After using the WD Blue 500GB SSD in place of our regular SATA hard drives it increases the overall battery backup by consuming less power.