There’s also £15 off the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro today, too, bringing this great value drive down to £100. This is actually the same as its 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 around 12% slower by my benchmark figures - but its random read speeds are exceptional. In fact, it’s still the fastest PCIe 3.0 drive I’ve tested in this respect, and is well worth considering if the SN750’s current price is a bit too expensive for you. Of course, if you’re after a true 1TB NVMe bargain, I’d still recommend going with WD’s other rather excellent SSD, the Blue SN550. This is pretty much just as fast as the Black SN750, but costs £20 less at just £90. It is, however, out of stock at the moment, so if you’re in need of new storage right away, then the Black SN750 or SX8200 Pro are arguably better bets for the time being. Alternatively, if £90 is a bit beyond your current budget, then the 1TB and 500GB models of the M.2 variant of WD’s older Blue 3D NAND SSD are also on sale today, with £10 shaved off the usual price of the former to take it down to £82, and £4 off the latter to bring it to £49. However, while these drives might look very similar to the Black SN750 in terms of form factor, they’re actually SATA SSDs rather than proper NVMe ones. As such, they will be limited to SATA speeds rather than the faster PCIe 3.0 standard. SATA is still a lot faster than a HDD, of course, but PCIe 3.0 is faster still. 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 2.5in counterparts. That said, I’d still recommend opting for the 2.5in models if you can help it, if only because ideally you’ll want to save the limited number of M.2 slots you’ve got on your motherboard for proper NVMe drives. Most motherboards only come with one or two M.2 slots these days (three if you’re lucky and got enough money for a high-end motherboard), so it seems a bit of a waste to use these slots on drives that won’t get you take full advantage of it.
