If you’ve been thinking about upgrading your PC’s storage banks recently, you’ll be happy to hear that there is a whole host of SSDs on sale from Amazon UK today. Our pick of the bunch is £ 30 off the 1TB model of the excellent WD Black SN750, their flagship gaming SSD that’s now the cheapest since last year’s Black Friday sale.
The Black SN750’s 1TB model is stuck at £ 139 for most of January, making the current deal price of £ 110 a decent savings. Indeed, the last time it was this cheap was during last year’s Black Friday sale, according to my Amazon price tracker, where it dropped to £ 105 in the week leading up to the Black Friday festivities – and an even more tempting £ 100 on the day itself.
There is also a £ 15 discount today on the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, bringing this great value drive down to £ 100. This is basically the same as the Black Friday price, making it a great time to pick it up. The SX8200 Pro isn’t quite as fast as the WD Black SN750 when it comes to random write speeds – it’s about 12% slower by my benchmark numbers – but the random read speeds are exceptional. In fact, it’s still the fastest PCIe 3.0 drive I’ve tested in this regard, and it’s worth considering if the SN750’s current price is a bit too expensive for you.
Of course, if you’re looking for a real bargain 1TB NVMe, I still recommend going with WDs Others quite excellent SSD, the Blue SN550. This is pretty much as fast as the Black SN750, but costs £ 20 less for just £ 90. However, it is currently out of stock, so if you need new storage right away, the Black SN750 or SX8200 Pro might be better for now. choice.
Alternatively, if £ 90 is slightly above your current budget, the 1TB and 500GB models of the M.2 variant of WD’s older Blue 3D NAND SSD are also on sale today, taking £ 10 off the usual price of the former. to bring it back to £ 82, and £ 4 off the latter to bring it to £ 49.
While these drives are very similar in form factor to the Black SN750, they are actually SATA SSDs rather than actual NVMe drives. As such, they are limited to SATA speeds rather than the faster PCIe 3.0 standard. SATA is of course still a lot faster than a hard drive, but PCIe 3.0 is still faster.
I reviewed the 2.5in version of the WD Blue 3D NAND a while back and it’s a great SSD for those on a budget. Indeed, at these new prices, the M.2 versions of the drive are either cheaper or the same price as their 2.5-inch counterparts. That said, I would still recommend going for the 2.5in models if you can do something about it, if only because ideally you want to keep the limited number of M.2 slots you have on your motherboard for the correct NVMe drives. Most motherboards these days only come with one or two M.2 slots (three if you’re lucky and have enough cash for a high-end motherboard), so it seems a bit of a shame to use these slots on drives that have won ‘You can’t take full advantage of it.