It is with great excitement that Western Digital announces a new SSD. Its WD_Black SN850 is the fastest drive available today and tops our guide to the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Its new drive, the WD_Black SN750 SE, is also a PCIe 4.0 drive, but it is not targeted at the same users.

So while the original SN750 (PCIe 3.0 drive) offers 3,400MB/sec and the SN850 (PCIe 4.0) offers 7,000MB/sec read speeds, the new SN750 SE (PCIe 4.0) offers a fairly mediocre speed increase over the original and at a mere 3,600 MB/sec. It also comes in smaller capacities of 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB.

Western Digital is using a Phison controller in its new SN750 SE drive, which, like the Samsung 980 (non-Pro version), is DRAM-less and attempts to keep the price down. It also uses only one side of the PCB to operate at lower temperatures than the SN750 and SN850.

No heat sinks are needed, which may be good news depending on the cooling conditions of your case or laptop. These drives consume 30% less power than their predecessors, another reason why they are an attractive option for notebooks.

The only issue is the actual pricing; WD is offering a 250GB model for £56.99, a 500GB SSD for £85.99, and a 1TB drive for £166.99. There have been a number of inexpensive SSDs on the market recently that offer nearly identical performance for a similar amount of money; it is not clear what the WD brand adds to this offering.

Interestingly, this new drive does not replace the existing SN750, but sits alongside it. If you shop around, you can usually get the SN750 for less than the launch price of the new SN750 SE SSD. And while it is theoretically 200MB/s slower, when it comes to game loading, it can be hard to tell the difference.

Western Digital also announced a smaller external SSD targeted at console users called the WD_Black D30. This is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 device that offers up to 900 MB/sec read and comes in 500 GB, 1 TB, and 2 TB capacities. We PC gamers already have plenty of choices on this front, as you can see in our guide to the latest external drives, but there is something endearing about this small size. However, the 2TB drive is priced at 299 pounds, so it's a little less cute.