Tuesday, October 11th 2016
Western Digital Announces the WD Blue and WD Green Consumer SSDs
Western Digital Corporation today announced WD Blue and WD Green solid state drives (SSDs), the first WD-branded SATA client SSDs. The new SSDs complement the company's industry leading family of hard drives for PCs and workstations, providing a full portfolio of WD storage devices for virtually any application.
The ultimate solution for building DIY PCs, extending the life of current PCs or upgrading existing storage, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs boast near-maximum speed of SATA drives, best-in-class endurance and MTBF and WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification, resulting in quick boot times and increased program responsiveness. Consumers benefit from the combination of reliable storage with an industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, coupled with reduced power and less heat when compared to HDDs. Both include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance and capacity monitoring. For consumers who are looking for instant-on responsiveness, durability, low power consumption, and ultra-thin, ultramobile form factors, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs are the perfect options.
"There is significant demand among our core WD resellers and consumers for a broad set of flash-based storage options," says Eyal Bek, senior director, Devices Bsiness Unit, Western Digital. "The expansive reach of the WD channel enables availability of a Western Digital SSD solution. We are very proud to have developed and launched WD Blue and WD Green SSDs, and believe they'll provide the instant-on, reliability and capacity benefits our customers have been demanding."
Pricing and Availability
The ultimate solution for building DIY PCs, extending the life of current PCs or upgrading existing storage, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs boast near-maximum speed of SATA drives, best-in-class endurance and MTBF and WD Functional Integrity Testing (F.I.T.) Lab certification, resulting in quick boot times and increased program responsiveness. Consumers benefit from the combination of reliable storage with an industry-leading 1.75M hours MTTF, coupled with reduced power and less heat when compared to HDDs. Both include free, downloadable, WD SSD Dashboard software, which allows continuous performance and capacity monitoring. For consumers who are looking for instant-on responsiveness, durability, low power consumption, and ultra-thin, ultramobile form factors, the WD Blue and WD Green SSDs are the perfect options.
Pricing and Availability
- WD Blue SSD: For customers looking for enhanced SATA performance, WD Blue SSDs are optimized for multitasking and resource-heavy applications. Perfect in either a notebook or desktop PC, WD Blue SSDs are available in 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors. The WD Blue SSD offers up to 545MB/s and 525MB/s sequential read and write speeds, and endurance up to 400 TBW. Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) ranges from $79.00 USD to $299.00 USD and will be available immediately to select customers worldwide.
- WD Green SSD: WD Green SSDs deliver essential-class performance, and are a great option for everyday use. Available in 120GB and 240GB capacities, and in both 2.5-inch/7mm case or M.2 2280 form factors, WD Green SSDs deliver an ultra-low power-draw, enabling PC users to work longer between battery charges. WD Green features sequential read and write times of up to 540MB/s and 405MB/s and endurance up to 80TBW. WD Green SSDs will be available later this quarter to select regions and customers.
29 Comments on Western Digital Announces the WD Blue and WD Green Consumer SSDs
either way, the slight expectation i had for new price standards is gone as if it never existed. We are getting there, just slower than we should have.
www.anandtech.com/show/10741/the-western-digital-blue-1tb-ssd-review
Green = Crap but cheap
Blue = Mid range
Black = High end
RE/Velociraptor = Enthusiast
Red/Gold/Pink/Rainbow = special purpose like surveillance
Though it's interesting to see WD finally going SSD. Too bad they have no 2TB drives, really interested if this is just Sandisk drives with new sticker or new design. Either way they'll be pretty good imo.
What Samsung did was just tuning the performance of these drives to be as high as possible for its intended usage. During normal desktop usage, these drives will not throttle. The enterprise versions of said SSDs were tuned differently, had a bit lower initial performance, but don't throttle in typical environments even under heavy load.
They are using their influence in the big Enterprise market...
*EDIT*
To explain further, about 15 years ago we had IDE drives that used PATA* connectors, these were replaced by AHCI drives that used SATA connectors (which could operate in IDE mode too).
Later we started getting AHCI drives with mSATA, SATA express and PCI-E connectors, and now also M.2.
Now we have newer NVMe drives that use PCI-E, M.2 and other connectors.
* Prior to the implementation of SATA, PATA was simply referred to as ATA (I.E ATA33/ATA100)