Final Thoughts

The WD Black2 is designed specifically as an upgrade for laptops with a unmarried bulldoze bay and it's somewhat pointless in any situation where split SSDs and HDDs tin be used in tandem. People who fit the usage case ultimately have a selection between one storage tech or another, and this is where the Black2 presents itself as a feasible option -- the only option, in fact, every bit no other production offers what it does.

You could technically install a 120GB to 256GB SSD and then rely on external USB 3.0 storage, simply that's not exactly the near applied or mobile solution, nor is the cloud if connectivity is limited. At the same time, at that place'south no going back to a 5400RPM hard drive later on you experience the snappiness of flash, then having an SSD kicking device is a must in our opinion. The claiming is juggling toll, operation and capacity.

That'southward when the Black2 starts to look a picayune shaky. Samsung's SSD 840 Evo 500GB seems similar the well-nigh economical choice considering it's nearly the aforementioned cost as WD'southward combo drive and half a terabyte is still enough of storage in a laptop. The 840 Evo 1TB is too bachelor and although information technology'due south much faster than the Black2, information technology's besides 80% pricier and offers 12% less storage. Still, we can see that tradeoff being awfully tempting.

It's non like the Black2 is cheap past any means. At $300, yous're paying a premium to have the SSD and HDD merged into a single drive. A 1TB notebook bulldoze only costs about $130 and a decent 120GB SSD tin be had for less than $100. WD'due south combo offering isn't particularly fast, either. The Black2'south flash drive has sluggish write operation compared to modern SSDs, fifty-fifty mainstream-oriented series like the Evo 840.

That said, there's no comparing the performance of the Black2'southward flash memory with any ii.5" disk drive, and that's probably closer to WD's original intent. Nonetheless, nosotros tin can't help merely feel like the company could take diddled us away by equipping the drive with a more competent controller than the JMicron 667H. If nothing else, we're happy to be one pace closer to finding a remainder between today'due south storage technologies.

Nosotros're also pleased to report that the combo drive runs smoothly despite existence the first of its kind. If your experience is similar to ours, we're confident early adopters won't feel like beta testers. While it may non be the fastest or most affordable option, the Black2 works as expected and fills a gap in the storage market, which seems worthy enough of our outstanding honor. Kudos WD for trying to shake things upwardly a little.

Pros: The only 2.five" drive that crams dissever flash and disk drives into one packet, providing more speed than an HDD and more than storage than an SSD for a tolerable premium.

Cons: Information technology's also much slower than alternatives such as Samsung's SSD 840 Evo 500GB, which is available for almost the aforementioned price and offers plenty infinite for well-nigh notebooks.