WD Blue SN5000 SSD review: Good performance, excellent price
At a glance
Expert's Rating
Pros
Good everyday performance
Very affordable
Fastest NVMe SSD of any ilk we’ve tested writing 450GB
Cons
Top performance requires HMB support
Our Verdict
The WD Blue SN5000 is among the fastest host memory buffer (HMB) SSDs I’ve tested. It even tied the record in our 450GB write test. It’s also one of the most affordable NVMe SSDs out there.
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Product
Price
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Unless you’re looking to upgrade a device that doesn’t support Host Memory Buffer (using the device’s own memory for cache), such as the Playstation 5, then an HMB NVMe SSD such as the most-worthy WD Blue SN5000 can save you bucks. In the SN5000’s case, a lot of bucks.
And in practical terms, you’re not giving up a whole lot of performance that you likely don’t need anyway.
Further reading: See our roundup of the best SSDs to learn about competing products.
What are the WD Blue SN500’s features?
The WD Blue SN5000 is a 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) form factor, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe SSD featuring a host memory buffer (DRAM-less) design with an in-house controller and 112-layer TLC NAND on the 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB drives, and 162-layer TLC NAND on the 4TB.