WD had launched SN550 which uses BiCS4:
It was an upgrade to the SN500 which used BiCS3.
Some people are having problems with new 2.5" WD Blue SATA drives:
Also
The problem is also cropping up on https://www.newegg.com/western-digital-blue-2tb/p/N82E16820250093, https://www.newegg.com/western-digital-blue-250gb/p/N82E16820250086 and Re: Does HP Pavilion p003-tx notebook support both SSD & PCI... - Page 2 - HP Support Community - 7666078; in non-English speaking Western Digital WD Blue 3D SSD (500GB) : 다나와 가격비교, https://www.citilink.ru/catalog/computers_and_notebooks/hdd/ssd_in/1015925/vopros-otvet/, Western Digital WD Blue 3D SSD (1TB) : 다나와 가격비교, https://www.citilink.ru/catalog/computers_and_notebooks/hdd/ssd_in/1015927/vopros-otvet/
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?
P.S: Two more links from the same thread:
Despite BiCS4 being better 2 different versions of wd blue 3D 2.5" ssd drives. One is significantly slower. Beware. | [H]ard|Forum the WD Blue 2.5" SATA drives using it doesn’t seem to perform better than the old one 2 different versions of wd blue 3D 2.5" ssd drives. One is significantly slower. Beware. | [H]ard|Forum whereas the SN550 NVMe is in many metrics better than SN500.
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.
