SanDisk launches WD Blue SN5100, WD Black SN7100 discounted

SanDisk on Thursday introduced a new WD Blue SSD aimed at creators and power users while Western Digital Black drives are appearing at unusually low prices, giving buyers fresh options across performance and price points. The WD Blue SN5100, announced by SanDisk, is a PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe drive available now in capacities from 500 gigabytes to 4 terabytes and backed by a five year warranty. At the same time retailers are discounting the WD Black SN7100 family, including temporary cuts on 2TB and 4TB models.

SanDisk said the SN5100 delivers as much as 30 percent better performance than the outgoing SN5000 series by pairing the company's PCIe 4.0 controller with Kioxia BiCS8 QLC NAND and its nCache 4.0 dynamic SLC caching technology. On paper SanDisk lists sequential read and write speeds up to about 7,100 MB per second and 6,700 MB per second on the 1TB and 2TB SKUs, with the lower-capacity models rated slightly lower. Random I/O tops out near 1 million read IOPS and 1.3 million write IOPS, the company said. SanDisk also confirmed the drive is DRAMless and single sided in the popular M.2 2280 form factor, designed for compatibility with desktops, laptops and consoles when a...