M.2 vs SSD boot

[jedinym]

I'd like to upgrade my boot drive from my HDD to an SSD or M.2 drive. Will the M.2's read speeds speed up my boot or should i just buy an SSD ? 

[Moonzy]

normal sata ssd if you're not accessing the drives for files often

 

m.2 and sata ssd are pretty much the same for the average consumer, while the m.2 cost more

[comicsansms]

M.2 is faster, smaller but more expensive and harder to choose.

Sata is cheaper and fairly easy to choose, but a lot bigger and slower.

[porina]

I have a M.2 SSD as my boot drive (2GB/s), and I can't say in real use you would notice the speed difference over a 2.5" SSD (550MB/s) which would be cheaper.

[paddy-stone]

I like the convenience of the M.2 drive, no sata/power cables needed obviously. So that's one less cable that I have to manage, I like high airflow through my case. BTW M.2 comes in AHCI/NVME flavours, M.2 by itself is no faster or slower than using AHCI on a SATA SSD... using an M.2 drive though will usually take the place of SATA ports 5 and 6, so you will no longer be able to use those SATA ports if you have an M.2 drive.

[NumLock21]

M.2 is just the connector and has nothing to do with a SSD. M.2 supports either SATA or PCIe protocol.  M.2 SATA base SSD will have the same performance as a normal SATA SSD.  M.2 PCIe base SSD will be faster than a SATA SSD and M.2 SATA SSD. Using M.2 will also use up PCIe lanes.