tl;dr It has been over 2.5 years since WD Blue was last updated and many other brands have introduced their 96L 3D NAND products (some of them based on WD’s own BiCS4) so when can we expect WD Blue series to get updated? When can we see WDS500G3B0A in the market?
Some history:
2.5" WD Blue SATA was launched with planar TLC NAND in 2016. The product #s were like WDS500G1B0A.
In May 2017 the shift to 64L 3D TLC was announced and full availability followed soon. The product numbers are like WDS500G2B0A. Th new products had better performance and slightly lower power consumption.
Just a month after the launch of BiCS3 64L 3D NAND drives, in June 2017 WD announced their 96L BiCS4 3D TLC NAND. But now it has been over 2 years without an upgrade. Customers who are in the shops in 2020 are still buying technology from early 2017, not to mention the newer 96L BiCS4 technology under discussion is also from 2017.
Will WD soon offer an update (just the way they did from 2016 to 2017)?
Why not directly jump to their 112L BiCS5 TLC they announced just last week?
Why’s the mix-up? Why the switch to BiCS4 without changing the model number and in the process even mixing it up with their SanDisk lineup (btw SanDisk doesn’t even sell anything by called SanDisk G5 and it isn’t there on UserBenchmark but here PassMark - SanDisk SSD G5 BICS4 - Price performance comparison and here Novabench - SanDisk SSD G5 BICS4 - Storage Performance)?
Buyers in the market for a new or old WD Blue, will never know what to expect … 64L or 96L.
This isn’t happening with the NVMe WD Blue drives - there’s clear distinction of SN500 vs SN550.
With this going on even the question arises whether the newer technologies should be anticipated? Or the company themselves feel the power and performance difference is not enough to warrant a model number change? WD has not yet upgraded their Black line of upscale SSDs, what does it say about the newer technology. Should it be anticipated eagerly or mostly it will be the same or a step backwards?
Unfortunately 2.5" WD Blue was one of the best value options on the market for the millions of slightly older systems which do not have NVMe. Looks like buyers should go elsewhere ~ buying something that is a step backwards from a 2017 product doesn’t seem feasible in 2020.
Why is it always said that SATA interface is overwhelmed by modern SSDs even though only the first few seconds of file-copying are @ 500+ MB/s, the speed generally reduces to 200-250 MB/s after just a few seconds?
A controller upgrade should also come! Not for speed, but for latency … and the lower power consumption of a new manufacturing process (12/7/5 nm) will help battery life.
There’s lots of 2.5" SATA customers still around and 4 years is time enough to revamp the product in a big way.
Update 26th Feb 2023: Western Digital revenue misery continues – Blocks and Files This document notes that still the BiCS5 is used the most and BiCS8 is maturing ahead of time, maybe there will be direct jump from BiCS5 to BiCS8 as far as market products are concerned.
Apparently the 250GB, 500GB and 1TB versions are branded as SA510 and have the “3” in the model # whereas the larger 2TB & 4TB versions still have the “2” WD Blue™ SATA Internal SSD Hard Drive 2.5”/7mm cased | Western Digital although the 3D NAND written clearly on the sticker (in 2020) doesn’t seem to be present anymore.
TechPowerUp tells the launch date 31st May 2022, and also that the NAND is BiCS5:
There’s limited information about SA510. Some have speculated (see above links) that it is a DRAMless configuration. This brings it parallel to the NVMe series in WD product range, where Green = QLC, Blue = DRAMless and WD_BLACK = DRAM.
The previous distinction in 2.5" range was Blue = DRAM & Green = DRAMless, now if the Blue (SA510) = DRAMless, then what is the difference now?
More guessing: Blue = DRAMless 3D TLC, Green = DRAMless QLC! Can anybody please confirm?
