Help Me Pick an M.2 SSD

[Maat Mons]

I need it to be 80mm long, no more, no less.  The laptop only has one spot for the standoff.  I’m aiming for 2TB, since my current 1TB SSD is getting pretty full.  I was hoping to keep it under 200 USD, but I could maybe go a little over that if it makes for a big jump in performance. 

 

I looked through the Newegg pricing of as many S- and A-tier entries from our list as I could find.  These ones appealed to me. 

MSI SPATIUM M470

Seagate Firecuda 520

Team Group T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q

 

I also looked through the Newegg pricing for as many of the underlined B-tier entries as I could find.  They didn’t seem all that much cheaper, but these are the ones that appealed to me. 

Sabrent Rocket Q

SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS

 

I’m leaning towards the Firecuda, just for being the cheapest thing on the A-tier list. 

[Drkl0rd]

Maybe not super helpful but, I have x2 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus's in my machine and I've been super happy with them

[aisle9]

Check Newmaxx and see if they have a review of any of those. Go by their recommendation. The only one I would just outright not buy is the Rocket Q. No way would I spend that much on QLC, or use QLC on a boot drive. Not going to check everything, but if any others are QLC, they would also be a hard pass for me.

[Maat Mons]

Odd, I only searched Newegg for drives our tier list said were TLC.  I guess I wound up on pages for the wrong models in same cases, because the Team Group T-FORCE CARDEA Z44Q and Sabrent Rocket Q are both QLC.  Maybe I should have picked up on that from the names. 

 

 

 

I can’t find where the MSI SPATIUM M470 says what kind of NAND it uses.  It has 2 GB of DDR4 cache, and it supports PCIe Gen 4.  $191

 

The Seagate Firecuda 520 uses TLC.  I can’t find anything about its cache.  It supports PCIe Gen 4.  $180

 

The SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS uses TLC.  It has 1 GB of DDR4 cache, and it supports PCIe Gen3.  $190

 

 

 

I’ve discovered my laptop is only capable of handling PCIe Gen 3, so I guess Gen 4 is no longer a selling point. 

 

 

 

I’m not familiar with Newmaxx.  I took a look at it.  Mostly, all I managed to find there were links to reviews on other sites.  Is that what I was looking for?  Or is it something else?