32 MARCH2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE385
WDBlackP10
GameDrive
★★★★★
£130•From shop.westerndigital.com
Small files
Large files
Hugefiles
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
See page 98 forperformancedetails
CAPACITY4TB•COST PERGIGABYTE3.2p•INTERFACE
USB3.1•CLAIMEDREAD140MB/s•CLAIMED WRITE
140MB/s•WARRANTYThreeyears RTB•DETAILSwww.
westerndigital.com•PART CODEWDBA3A0040BBK
SPECIFICATIONS
90MB/s
115MB/s
120MB/s
ATTHEIFAtech show in September,wehad
ourfirstin-the-flesh look at WD’s new Black
range of external drives. Like the internal,
M.2-based Black SN750 (Shopper376), these
drives come with afocus on gaming, and
once again it’s not exactly clear why,as
good gaming storage only really needs high
capacity and fast read speeds. Still, that also
means that ahard disk or SSD that works well
with games will also work well with everything
else,soeven the grumpiest of play-haters
might find something to work with here.
The Black P10 Game Drive is the most
conventional external hard disk of the
bunch. It’s aportable USB3.1drive,and is
compatible with PCs as well as Xbox One
and PlayStation 4consoles–whereas the
similar Black P10 forXbox One is only
certified forMicrosoft’sconsole (and also
comes bundled with atwo-month Xbox
Game Pass Ultimatesubscription).
BIG PLAYS
The idea is that you keep entire games
installed on the external drive,something that
might sound like agood idea if you bought a
console with just 500GB of internal storage
and want to keep more than afew titles to
hand. The Black P10 Game Drive commits a
little harder to larger capacities than the
Xbox-only model, with 2TB, 4TB (tested here)
and 5TB options, compared to 1TB, 3TB and
5TB. Interestingly,the only shared capacity
–5TB –ischeaper with the standard version,
costing £135 to the Xbox version’s £140.
In terms of cost per gigabyte, the 2TB
model’s 4.5p isn’t terribly appealing, but the
3.2p of the 4TB model is better,asis2.3p for
the 5TB model. While these prices put the
Black P10 Game Drive towards the high end of
hard disks, we wouldn’t call it unreasonable:
you’re getting USB3.1connectivity,which is
significantly faster than the USB3 standard
used by cheaper drives, and build quality is
high. The metal-clad Black P10 Game Drive
VERDICT
Avery decent, if rarely remarkable,portable
hard disk for games and files alike
EXTERNAL HARD DISK
feelshardyandrobust, whichis particularly
important forhard disks compared to more
naturally shock-resistant SSDs.
The upside of the 2TB model is that it’s
both thinner and lighter than the 4TB and
5TB models: it’s 12.8mm thick and weighs
140g, compared to 20.8mm and 230g forthe
larger capacities. We wouldn’t sayeither of
these are toochunkyfor ahard disk, however.
The Black P10 Game Drive fits the bill
on capacity and design, then, leaving
performance as the last barrier to clear.
WD only quotes ‘speeds’ up to 140MB/s,
without specifying read or writespeeds, but
with USB3.1that sounds feasible foreither.
Nonetheless, we put it to the test in
CrystalDiskMark, using one of the USB3.1
ports on our testing PC.
In the sequential test, which usually
maxes out adrive’s true read and write
speeds, the Black P10 Game Drive didn’t
quitehit 140MB/s, but came close with a
136MB/s read speed. Its sequential write
speed wasn’t massively faroffeither,at
129MB/s, and both are notably faster than
the 118MB/s that WD’s more mainstream
My Passport HDD managed in both tests.
PACEYOURSELF
These are respectable results, even at the high
price.However,like pretty much all external
drives we’ve tested, the random 4K test
proved extremely trying: here the Black P10
Game Drive could only manage a0.6MB/s
and an 11MB/s write
howcasing the
vantages of makingdo
hmechanical storage
nstead of paying more
for an SSD.
Speeds jumped
back up in our huge
file test, which paints a
more realistic picture
oftheperformance you can expectbyusing
real Windows transfers instead of synthetic
tests. Here,WD’sdrive averaged a121MB/s
read speed and a119MB/s writespeed, which
is again pretty good.
These speeds also barely dropped once we
switched to the tougher large files test, which
involves bulk-moving several music files
instead of asinglevideo file. Read speeds
averaged out to 116MB/s, while writespeeds
averaged to 114MB/s; the Toshiba Canvio
Premium (Shopper377)was quicker in both,
but this drive is even more expensive while
not being as well-made.
Last up was the small files test, in which
the Black P10 Game Drive produced an
86MB/s read speed and a93MB/s write
speed. This is the only benchmark in which
writespeeds outpaced read speeds, which
makes sense fora‘gaming’ drive as read
speeds will determine things like load times.
THE NEW BLACK
Again, however,highspeeds will benefit all
sorts of PC software, not just console games,
and generally the Black P10 Game Drive is as
quick as it needs to be.That means it’s not
fantastically fast either,but it does shift files
faster than the My Passport, which also
happens to be more expensive.
JamesArcher
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