Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

All I can say is wow! I returned an ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO 500GB for this one and am so glad I did. All PCIE NVME drives are not created equal and benchmark's don't mean anything because they are synthetic and the drives are built to show the "best" performance on the benchmarks, which can be a far cry from how they actually perform. First the XPG SX8200 Pro website only gives you the best specs from the 1TB drive and it's nearly impossible to find the slower performance information of the 512GB and 256GB drive on their website (should be a big hint to performance since they don't easily publish it, or list the smaller drive specs on the main page). Second, the bench marks were pretty close on cyrstal diskmark, but when I was actually testing 9GB file copies to and from the XPG, it was often below 600MB/s (even as low as 150MB/s steadily). It did perform better at times, but it was so spotty and nowhere near the benchmarks on a regular basis, I either got a dud or it's just not as good as the specs are in real world performance. Yeah, it was about $30 cheaper than the the new Samsung EVO PLUS 970, but in the end, the price difference was waaaaay overshadowed by the real world performance. So, when I got the 500GB Samsung EVO PLUS 970, I popped it in the same slot that the ADATA was just in and not only did it surpass the specs of the CrystalDisk Mark bench, but the real world file copies (using the same file as before), were steadily around 2000MB/s. Not as fast as the benchmark, but leaps and bounds better than the ADATA and the other PCIE NVME drives I've had the ability to test with. Also, those speeds stayed constant for the entire file copy, where most other drives fluctuate up and down. I know that even larger file copies will eventually slow down when the cache runs out, but that's the same for all PCIe NVME drives that are using TLC (or anything other than MLC flash). And, Samsung is upfront with not just the benchmark read/write performance of the drives when using TurboBoost with the cache, but also the performance speeds you can expect when the cache runs out. No other manufacturer is showing that and that shows Samsung's confidence int their drives. This drive blew me away, so much, I just ordered another one. I honestly don't think other "similar" drives are even in the ballpark on performance (The WD N750 might be the closest, but it's still not on the level of this drive in REAL-WORLD performance for file copies). If you're considering saving a few bucks on a cheaper PCIe NVME drive, I'd highly suggest you do your own large file copies and see if your "cheaper" drive really handles how it says it will based off of the superficial benchmark tests. Otherwise, save yourself the disappointment and just get the Samsung EVO PLUS to begin with and you'll be happy that you did.