The Western Digital WD Black SN850 has clearly established itself as a premium consumer SSD. It trades the lead with the Samsung 980 PRO on many tests but beats Samsung more often than not, making the WD Black SN850 the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSD we have tested so far.

Western Digital was slow to get into the NVMe game and at times it has seemed like they weren’t trying very hard to go after the high end. But they’re definitely serious contenders now. The high-end consumer SSD market is no longer just Samsung and the runners-up.