If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your computer’s desktops recently, you’ll be glad to hear that a number of SSDs are on sale at Amazon UK today. Our choice is £ 30 less than the 1TB model of the excellent WD Black SN750, their flagship SSD which is now the cheapest since last year’s Black Friday sale.
The 1TB model of the Black SN750 held on to £ 139 for most of January, making the current price of £ 110 quite the saving. The last time it was so cheap was during my Black Friday sale last year, according to my Amazon price finder, where it dropped to £ 105 in the week leading up to the Black Friday festivities – and an even more enticing £ 100 on the day itself.
There’s also £ 15 off the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro today, bringing this great value propulsion to £ 100. It’s actually the same as the Black Friday price, which makes it a great time to pick it up. The SX8200 Pro is not as fast as the WD Black SN750 when it comes to random write speeds – it’s about 12% slower according to my standard figures – but its random read speed is exceptional. In fact, it’s still the fastest PCIe 3.0 drive I’ve tested in this regard, and it’s worth considering if the current price of the SN750 is a little too expensive for you.
Of course, if you want to go for a real 1TB NVMe bargain, I would still recommend going with WDs other fairly excellent SSD, the Blue SN550. It’s just as fast as the Black SN750, but costs £ 20 less at just £ 90. However, it’s currently out of stock, so if you need new storage right away, the Black SN750 or SX8200 Pro is probably a better bet for now.
Alternatively, if £ 90 is a little bigger than your current budget, then the 1TB and 500GB models of the M.2 variant of WD’s older Blue 3D NAND SSD are also on sale today, with £ 10 shaved off the regular price of the former to take it down to £ 82, and £ 4 of the latter to bring it to £ 49.
Although these drives look a lot like the Black SN750 in terms of form factor, they are actually SATA SSDs rather than proper NVMs. As such, they will be limited to SATA speeds rather than the faster PCIe 3.0 standard. SATA is of course still much faster than an HDD, but PCIe 3.0 is even faster.
I reviewed the 2.5in version of the WD Blue 3D NAND a while ago, and it’s an excellent SSD for those on a budget. At these new prices, the M.2 versions of the driver are cheaper or the same price as their 2.5 in counterparts. That said, I would still recommend opting for the 2.5-in models if you can help, if only because you want to be ideal to save the limited number of M.2 slots you have on your motherboard for the right NVMe stations. Most motherboards these days only have one or two M.2 slots (three if you are lucky and have enough money for a high-end motherboard), so it seems a bit wasteful to use these slots on chips that have won ‘not to take full advantage of it.