Overall and Final Verdict

After the introduction of the WD Black SN850 last year as their flagship drive and having the SN750 around still as their fast PCIe Gen 3 drive I was surprised with the introduction of the SN770. For one I assumed the 800 series naming would be for the Gen 4 drives and 700 would stick for the PCIe Gen 3 drives. But that all changed last year with the SN750 SE which was a Gen 4 drive and is just cemented now with the SN770. Rather than having just the WD Blue M.2 for creators and then the one WD Black drive Western Digital has expanded that out a little which makes sense. A lot of people who are shopping for gaming drives aren’t looking at the highest end, but they also don’t want a slower drive as well.

The question is, performance-wise, does the SN770 fit that. After going through our testing I would say so. Sadly I haven’t had the chance to check out the SN850, but even just going off of its specs we know it still sits out in front of the SN770 and the other Gen 4 drives I have tested so far this year. The SN770 on the other hand comes in a little behind the flagship drives from other companies like the Fury Renegade but well ahead of the older Gen 4 drives. In some cases, it is even out in front of drives like the Renegade like with the SN770’s write IOPS which were impressive each time I tested them. It was also great in almost all of our real-world focused tests like the file transfers and PCMark 10 with it only struggling with the photo file transfers. In the end, I would call this a mid-range high-end drive. It could perform better in the read IOPS tests and sequential performance was below the top few drives tested but overall you are going to see solid performance from the SN770.

Beyond that, the drive does have the same 5-year warranty that the SN570 also had. Its styling isn’t bad as well with a very simple layout that allows for the branding sticker to be right on the PCB and of course, the SN770 has the blacked-out PCB and sticker just like you would expect from any WD Black product. My only complaint there was that this drive just like the SN570 has a completely different look in the picture of the drive on the packaging and on most retailers as well. I like the rendered look or the actual drive look, but I can see some people not being happy that the drive doesn’t look like they expect it to look shopping in retail or even online with both the box and Newegg/Amazon having the wrong picture.

The WD Black SN770 comes in more drive size options than the SN850 with it being available in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB.  The 1TB drive that I’m testing today is normally listed at $129.99 but from the start of writing this to the finish that price has gone on sale for $114.99 on their website and Amazon. For comparison the WD Blue SN570 is $109 normally but is down to $99 and as long as you have a PC that can support PCIe 4.0 the extra money is well worth it. Running with drives like the P400 in performance but at a cheaper price and with a better warranty as well and the Fury Renegade which was faster but for the price of the 1TB SN770 the Renegade would only get you half the capacity.

fv5recommended

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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