I recent news, the American storage manufacturer Western Digital has just officially announced the release of its new NAS-focused SSD series WD Red SN700. It is a PCIe 3.0 S which is however not the fastest one you can find on the market.
We have the PlayStation 5 compatible PCIe 4.0 SSD Samsung 980 PRO (from US$89 on Amazon) which can offer much higher read and write speeds for use cases where performance is key.
But, what makes this SSD from Western Digital special is that the WD Red SN700 is much faster than the traditional hard drives or 2.5-inch SSDs which are often put into non-professional NAS servers.
The WD Red SN700 comes in the usual M.2 2280 form factor and can touch read speeds up to 3,100MB/s and write speeds of up to 1,600MB/s with its TLC-based storage. The 4TB model reaches its end of life after 5100TB have been written over it, which means that it should last for a long time even in heavily used NAS systems.
These SSDs are backed by a five-year manufacturer warranty and are available in sizes including 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB of storage. Their MSRP is between US$65 and US$650, even though the eventual market price could be considerably lower. Most online shops have not yet listed the new WD Red SN700, but it is already available at the official Western Digital online shop.
So this new SSD might not offer something special but this is the current best PCIe 3.0 SSD found in the market.
