CES 2026: Sandisk Transforms SSD Lineup with New Optimus Branding

Sandisk to Retire Western Digital Branding for Consumer and Professional SSDs in Favor of Optimized Optimus Branding

Sandisk announced during CES 2026 that it is retiring the Western Digital branding for its solid state drives moving forward in favor of revamped Optimus branding for all of its SSDs. Set to simplify and unify the company’s lineup for both consumer and professional SSDs, new flash storage drives from Sandisk will carry new Optimus branding. The consumer level WD Blue drives will be replaced with Sandisk Optimus drives while the higher-end WD_BLACK drives will be replaced with new Sandisk Optimus GX drives. Finally, Sandisk plans to adopt Optimus GX PRO branding for its top-end solid state offerings.

According to Sandisk, its new SANDISK Optimus branding means new product packaging, product designs, and new tiers of performance to help consumers find the right drive at the right price for their workload requirements. The company offered that Optimus is intended for content creators and digital media consumers wanting a base level of performance. Optimus drives will fall into similar price-to-performance levels of today’s WD Blue SN5100 NVMe SSD. Moving up a bit in performance and capacity, Optimus GX drives will be marketed at gamers replacing drives such as the WD_BLACk SN7100 NVMe SSD. Finally, Sandisk will utilize the Optimus GX PRO branding for its newest, highest performance, SSDs aimed at professional workstations and AI workloads. Optimus GX PRO will sit at the top of the product stack and replace drives such as the WD_BLACK SN8100 NVMe SSD.

The SANDISK Optimus transformation kicked off with the announcement at CES, and consumers can expect new Optimus, Optimus GX, and Optimus GX PRO internal SSDs to be available for purchase, pre-order, and notification within the first half of 2026.

While the Western Digital branding is no more, fortunately it appears that Sandisk is still committed to delivering consumer solid state drives unlike Crucial. With the threat of higher prices for RAM and NAND flash on the horizon, maintaining some level of competition is every more important for consumers and hopefully the new drives launching this year will give consumers affordable storage options even as data center customers clamor for hardware to run their AI workloads. I am looking forward to all of the flash storage technologies and products coming in 2026 although I am less enthusiastic about what the latest NAND flash advancements will cost.