Western Digital WDS100T3B0E Blue SN580 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive

I have absolutely no idea why the Samsung 970 Evo Plus is more popular than this drive. While the 970 seem to have a lot more sex appeal, when it comes down to numbers the SN580 absolutely takes the win. When it comes down to brass tax the SN580 is ultimately the best budget drive for your money.

Faster or equivalent sequential read & write speeds AND faster random read and writes. Significantly cheaper than that of the 970 Evo. Higher maximum operating temperature. PCIE Gen 4 support while the 970 Evo is stuck on Gen 3 AND if you somehow managed to write 600TB to the SN580 in the span of 5 years, it would not void your warranty while the 970 would.

On paper the only thing that the 970 EVO has over the SN580 (Cosmetics aside) is the DRAM, that being said it is clearly not being utilizied to the extent one would hope for and while the SN850 uses a Host Memory Buffer, it still manages to outperform. If DRAM is a must have then there are better options than that of the 970, but don't let the lack of said DRAM scare you out of the best NVME in its class.

It seems to work very well so far. WD is an old name in hard drives, so I have confidence it will continue to be reliable. But dont take my word for it ... Here is a review for it, excellent bang for the buck.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/wd-blue-sn580-1-tb/

this is a no frills good quality SSD. performance is great for the price plus you're getting WD reliability which many of the cheaper drives do not have. good choice for most use cases