Review on 💨 High-Speed Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD - Up to 2,400 MB/s - M.2 2280, Gen3 x4 PCIe 8Gb/s, 3D NAND - WDS100T2B0C by Duy Desperado

**Update August 2021** Western Digital has downgraded this product with a slower, lower quality flash and kept the same name so products manufactured after July 2021 WILL NOT BE THE SAME. Especially when the SLC cache is full on new drives, the write performance on these updated models will be 50% SLOWER. This appears to be a permanent change as Western Digital has updated the SN550 spec sheet to reflect the new changes. The rave reviews for SSD SN550 prior to July 2021 are NO LONGER APPLICABLE. Apparently Western Digital didn't learn anything from the whole SMR fiasco and is trying to replicate it here. The change will be transparent to most users, but that doesn't mean it's okay. Downgraded from 5 to 2. **End of upgrade** The WD Blue SN550 is an entry-level NVMe SSD that offers high performance and reliability at an affordable price. I bought a 1TB model to install as a second drive in a Lenovo P1 Gen 2 mobile workstation (which uses the same chassis as the X1 Carbon Extreme Gen 2) and what struck me about this particular NVMe drive is that it was made by a reputable manufacturer, it offered a lot for your money (1TB for $100 isn't bad as of Jan 2020), the 5 year warranty was above average for the class and the average active Output of 75mW was quite low, so I don't worry about temperature issues or a drastic reduction in battery life. Overall I'm very happy with the disc and haven't had any problems with it. Installing it in my Lenovo P1 Gen 2 was very easy. This particular machine has 2 NVMe drive slots with PCIe Gen 3 x4 support and to access the drive slots you just need to remove the screws on the bottom cover. Lenovo was kind enough to include a mounting screw and thermal tape for the second drive, even though I only chose one drive for my computer. I was able to install the drive in less than 5 minutes and Windows 10 automatically recognized my new WD Blue SN550 with no issues. All I had to do to complete the installation process was open Disk Management to initialize and format the drive. I usually use my laptop for office work, photo and graphic editing, and play a few games on the side. Tests show that the WD Blue SN550 is actually slightly slower than the 512GB Samsung PM981 that came with my device, but in terms of how I use my device there doesn't seem to be a significant difference in performance. Overall, I think the WD Blue SN550 is an economical, reliable, and affordable storage solution.