By TechPowerUp
Publication Date: 2026-09-14 20:03:00
Introduction
Sandisk is a famous storage brand that has been a leader in flash storage products for many years, selling SSDs and media cards. In 2016, the company was bought by Western Digital, and in 2025 the two split up again. After the separation, Sandisk took over the whole flash and SSD business, while WD focused on mechanical hard drives.
You probably remember our WD Black SN8100 review, which released as a product by Sandisk, yet we saw “WD” everywhere, which was a bit confusing. The Sandisk Optimus SSD series—announced at CES in January—ends that. It is the first consumer SSD family to carry Sandisk’s own branding, and it is split into three tiers: Optimus for everyday use, Optimus GX for gaming, and Optimus GX Pro at the top.
The Sandisk Optimus GX Pro 8100 in today’s review is the flagship of that new lineup, and it takes over from the WD Black SN8100. I definitely like that Sandisk kept the “8100” numbering scheme and didn’t try to invent their own, just for the sake of being different. Technically, both drives are identical—the same Silicon Motion SM2508 controller, carrying the same Sandisk part number, the same Kioxia BiCS8 218-layer TLC NAND, the same 2 GB of DDR4 cache. The only difference we spotted is that the DRAM cache is from Samsung now, same DDR4-3200 though, and of course the firmware is slightly newer, as expected for a review that’s conducted one year later.
The Silicon Motion SM2508 controller focuses on efficiency to help keep thermal…
