WD Blue Electric Boogaloo

The SN850 is a safe pick-up on the cheap, especially for laptops.

THE WD BLUE SN580 is the consummate budget NVMe SSD, taking a winning formula and making it better. It performs well enough with a fair range of capacities and solid support, making it a contender for our list of best SSDs. It’s relatively efficient, and the single-sided design makes it great for laptops. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table, but it’s an easy pick-up for a budget drive if you’re looking for a cheap upgrade that won’t disappoint, assuming the price is right.

The success of the Blue SN570 and Black SN770 has prompted WD to revamp the former with the Blue SN580. The SN580 is essentially an updated SN570, much as the SN570 was an updated Blue SN550, which succeeded the Blue SN500. The SN550 was very popular, but WD later changed its flash, negatively affecting performance. That brings us back to the SN580, which jumps up to a PCIe 4.0 interface for more bandwidth, uses a new caching scheme for better burst performance, and generally maintains or improves on the SN570 in every meaningful way.