Game loading, PCMark 10, SPECwpc, Copy Torture
The WD's performance is similar to the Kioxia Exceria reviewed recently in most benchmarks but it shows that drive a clean pair of heels in the custom copy torture test where it is over a minute faster at copying 93.8GB comprised of 20,704 files back on to itself.
Both entry-level NVMe SSDs offer twice as much performance as the SATA-based MX300 and, as it happens, are priced at around £110 each in a range-topping 1TB capacity.
There's no evidence in these benchmarks that not having a DRAM buffer on the SSD itself negatively impacts performance in common tasks, and even the tough SPECworkstation test fails to readily differentiate the two.
