>>Few weeks ago discussion was about SSD / which brand to buy.
>>One of the points was to be aware that some brands or models are created with great or at least good parts, resulting in above the board performance and great reviews, later are replaced with models with cheaper and less performant parts.
>>
>>SSD are a prime example, as controller, type of chips, RAM cache are often hard to estimate or follow.
>>Best hedge was to buy from solid brand - Samsung and my personal favortie Crucial were among them, aData was changing under wraps .
>>
>>Crucial had since MX500 great price / performance, with performance often near Samsung level.
>>The P2 never was one of faster models, but clearly on the low side and good enough for mostly R use.
>>
>>Seems Crucial started same game now, although they either communicated it more open (or market keeps closer tabs): https://www.tomshardware.com/features/crucial-p2-ssd-qlc-flash-swap-downgrade
>>
>>sad state of affairs
>
>Yep, I've seen YouTube videos about this scam. Thanks

They were probably selling off the old ones at Prime Day in June - about 30% discount at 146€ for 2TB incl. our VAT of 19% (for all cited prices) from oscillating around 215-225€ . I realized too late, when I wanted to buy they were already sold out: for storage of old stable tables to often Join, filter or analyze TLC reads would have been a boon.

Yesterday P2 2TB were selling here at 170€ - checked up on Tom and other news, decided to skip ;-)
Now they try to sell at 193-210€ again here, so a warning should be here for those in a hurry looking not in depth.

Missing the boat on Prime Day irks even more, but at least my post probably soon enough to help others avoid any such "bargains" that are really bad buys... P2 switching from RAM cached QLC P1 to no RAM TLC made sense in some use cases. Not any more!

So Samsung, WD or perhaps Crucial P5 plus - but always check newest specs!

upd: thinking of getting a new SATA SSD for main laptop - replacing 1TB with 2, 0.5 in backup with the 1 and keeping the 0.5 in an USB3 case - at least new version of MX500 shows nearly identical perf as years ago:
https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/crucial-mx500-m3cr033-im-test-die-ssd-empfehlung-mit-stand-2017-und-2021-im-vergleich.2015791/
only in German, but I read it, if Google translate is not clear ;-) /upd