https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-PRO-Internal-MZ-V7P1T0BW/... -- $439, 1TB.

Things really have changed over the years. I used to shop in the US and bring everything back with me to Europe because computer parts were half the price. Now I'm thinking about doing the reverse[0] (240€ for the same NVMe SSD over here).

[0]: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B07CGJNLBB/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_...

It's not the same product: 970 PRO vs 970 EVO.

Another shop:

https://www.alza.de/samsung-970-pro-1tb-d5319060.htm

276,47 EUR w/o VAT, 329 EUR with VAT. Currently, that's some 377 USD.

On Samsung's US website it's $350 (free s/h):

https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-st...

Yeah, that link I posted isn’t sold by Amazon but some random person. It’s probably marked up a bit.

NVME, not M2. All Macbook drives are now soldered straight to the motherboard.

Thanks. I confused the M.2 form factor with the NVME chips.

No it is not, I linked to the external Thunderbolt SSD (last one) so there are many more pieces involved in the Samsung SSD. But it's true that the Apple one is a lot faster since it's internal.

Sure, it connects via thunderbolt, but it's still just a SATA style SSD (max speeds around 550MBps). I'd love to find an external M.2 to get 1200MBps via external, but this seems to be a unicorn still. Although, I'm still happy to have 550MBps on a SATA SSD vs 110MBps via platters.

Here you go, 3412MBps (read) and 1884MBps (write) for the Samsung X5: https://www.techradar.com/reviews/samsung-x5-portable-ssd

Granted, it's a heck lot more expensive at 1TB for $700. It seems the only reason for this drive to exist is actual transfer speed because in any other way seems worse than the T5.

If you want USB, forget it. The best you'll get from a USB 3.1Gen2 > NVMe case is about 1GB/sec.

If you're willing (to pay) and able (to plug it in) to use Thunderbolt 3, there are several commercial products that use an NVMe internally and boast up to 2500MB/sec.

I have one of those drives - it's not Thunderbolt, just USB 3.1 gen 2.

It's also not a 2.5" drive since it's obviously smaller.

Oops, that's on me :)