Introduction

Western Digital (or simply WD) is the world’s largest manufacturer of storage solutions, mostly known for their wide range of hard disk offerings. With their acquisition of SanDisk in 2016, WD became one of the largest manufacturers for flash storage, too.

In this review we’re testing Western Digital’s new WD Blue SN580 budget SSD. As the name suggests, the SN580 is the successor to the SN570 that we reviewed in late 2021.

Internally, the WD Blue SN580 uses a SanDisk 20-82-10082 controller paired with 112-layer 3D TLC flash from Toshiba, also known as BiCS5. These are the same flash chips as on the SN570, the controller is a newer model that we haven’t seen before, but it seems very similar to the controller of the WD Black SN770. A DRAM cache is not available, definitely to reduce manufacturing cost. To connect with the rest of the system, the PCI-Express 4.0 interface is used.

The WD Blue SN580 is available in capacities of 250 GB ($30), 500 GB ($27), 1 TB ($46) and 2 TB ($93). Endurance for these models is set to 150 TBW, 300 TBW, 600 TBW and 900 TBW, respectively. WD includes a five-year warranty with the SN580.