Get the 2TB WD Blue SN550 for £175 (was £225, RRP £277)
If you’re looking to add on a ton of super-fast storage for games and media, or even use this as the number one drive in a new system, this is a great value option that isn’t lacking for performance. Katharine’s SN550 review calls the drive ‘disgustingly good value’, on the back of a low asking price and great sequential speeds. Compared to its already excellent predecessor, the SN550 improves its random write speeds as well as overall sustained importance, making it a much better choice to become your primary Windows drive. As Katharine notes, while this drive is up to five times faster than a traditional 2.5-inch SATA drive, you’ll need to have a motherboard with a free M.2 NVMe slot, or add one using a PCIe to NVMe SSD adapter. However, most motherboards - and even most laptops - these days come with at least one NVMe slot and often several, so the SN550 should be compatible with most computers built or bought in the last five years. If in doubt, search online for the name of your laptop and motherboard with the phrase “M.2 slot” in tow, and you should be good to go. Just remember that M.2 slots can support SATA drives, NVMe drives or both, so just confirm that you’ve got the NVMe sort before pulling the trigger. If you’re on the lookout for even faster speeds, why not check out our rundown of the best gaming SSDs? There are some lovely options here, including some PCIe 4.0 options that can reach up to 7000MB/s. That won’t make too much of a difference in game load times, but the advent of Microsoft’s DirectStorage API could change that in the future…
