Western Digital has launched its WD_Black SN7100 M.2 SSD, boasting top-tier performance among its pairs. Perfectly suited for most tasks, this unassuming drive can give your hardware the kick it needs.
WD_Black SN7100 is the brand’s latest Gen 4 SSD, featuring a DRAM-less design based on the brand’s latest 3D TLC NAND. It is rated for up to 7,250MB/s read and 6,900MB/s write on the 1TB and 2TB models. In other words, it goes nearly as fast as the interface allows, making it suited for consoles and select gaming handhelds, like Asus ROG Ally X. You can be sure you are not leaving performance on the table.
Though its DRAM-less nature may have an impact on performance in some demanding scenarios, you should be fine for day-to-day usage, including gaming. As a reminder, DRAM-less drives don’t feature dedicated RAM chips to cache data and accelerate transfer speeds. They instead count on the host’s system memory to do that job. But, as far as you are concerned, the experience should be as seamless as any other SSD.
For the rest of the specs, Western Digital announces up to 1,000,000 read IOPS and 1,400,000 write IOPS on its top-end models. You can check out our SN850X review to get an idea of what to expect from this new series, as the two share many similarities.
The 500GB version is slightly slower, maxing out at 6,800MB/s read and 5,800MB/s write, with 760,000 read IOPS and 1,200,000 write IOPS. Lastly, endurance is listed as 1,200 TBW, 600 TBW, and 300 TBW for the 2TB, 1TB, and 500GB drives, respectively. You can find more details in the table below.
| Capacity | 500GB | 1TB | 2TB |
| Sequential Read | 6,800MB/s | 7,250MB/s | 7,250MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 5,800MB/s | 6,900MB/s | 6,900MB/s |
| Random Read | 760k IOPS | 1,000k IOPS | 1,000k IOPS |
| Random Write | 1,200k IOPS | 1,400k IOPS | 1,400k IOPS |
| Endurance | 300 TBW | 600 TBW | 1,200 TBW |
| Operating Temperature | 0°C to 85°C | 0°C to 85°C | 0°C to 85°C |
| Dimensions (L×W×H) | 80×22×1.14mm | 80×22×1.14mm | 80×22×1.14mm |
While not as fast as the latest and greatest Gen 5 SSDs, which can reach up to 14GB/s, this is more than you need for most tasks. For instance, games have yet to leverage such speeds to blast through loading screens, and most apps can’t read or write this fast unless you are a content creator. As things stand, you would be better served by a slower yet larger Gen 4 drive than a faster but smaller Gen 5.
WD_Black SN7100 is available at $59.99 for 500GB capacity, $89.99 for 1TB, and $149.99 for 2TB, backed by a five-year warranty. The 4TB version has yet to launch, probably at around $300. These are not the cheapest SSDs currently on the market, but for the specs on offer, they are about right.
