SK hynix Gold P31 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen3 M.2 2280 Internal SSD, Up to 3500MB/S, Compact M.2 SSD Form Factor SSD - Internal Solid State Drive with 128-Layer NAND Flash

I am not sure if Hynix is a brand new brand, but I have had their name float around the past few years as a good brand. I have used their ram before so this is my first time using their M2 drive. First thing I will say about this is that the performance is beyond what I expected. I ran it against my samsung and crucial drives and this actually out performed them in speed. It was not significant where I would really notice without looking at the test results, but still impressive. If you are looking for a fast drive, I would recommend this drive. The only thing I would suggest you do is upgrade to the one TB at least. The reason being is that most people would fill up 500 gb very easily. For some, it may actually be just enough space. I actually use this for my back up gaming computer. I am able to store a few games that I play quite frequently as well as some additional software in case my main rig goes down. Like many M2 drives, this device does come with the screw to screw it down into a motherboard. You either have to purchase the screw separately or use the one that may have come with your motherboard if you did your own build. Most motherboards with an M2 drive come with one screw at least in the box. Before purchasing this, you should make sure that you have an NVMe M.2 slot that you can plug this into. Be careful as not all the ports will be the same as some may look similar but have very different plugs. I did do a test on the temperature while it was running and it was warm but not super hot. This makes it a bit more ideal for those ITX computers where space is limited. With the temperature this drive is performing at, it will work well in M2 enclosures without heat issues. This drive is pretty much plug and use although you will need to initialize and partition the drive. It does not come with any cloning software so you will have to find your own software to clone the drive. The boot up speed can be between six to ten seconds to boot up. Against of the other brands, it tends to be the first one to boot up. You do have an easier time access file quicker, but most of the time I do not really notice the difference without really looking. The load time is like a second or two faster. Again I do use this on my AMD back up gaming so I use this to store a few games on this drive and it is very quick speeds. It is pretty much instant boot up rather than that slight lag you get when loading from a disk drive. I did a speed test on the drive and it reached close to 3500 MB/s a few times but averages around 3300 to 3350 MB/s. Overall I think this is a good M2 solid state drive that can replace any drive but I do recommend you stick to one TB as 500 GB can get full pretty quickly in todays standards. Using an M2 drive will keep your computer organized by reducing the drive space you would use with a 2.5 or 3.5. I would not exactly jump to upgrade to an M2 drive if you are already have a 2.5 hard drive installed. Although this is faster, it is not too much where you would really care. You save a few seconds pretty much. Also for most people, the solid state drive is all they really need. To be honest, you should not really need to upgrade to this unless you are doing a brand new build or replacing a dead drive. The performance of this M2 drive is really good but the price is a bit high for just 500 GB. You probably could buy a 1 TB for a few dollars more and get a decent performance. This device again only comes with the M2 drive and does not come with any screws. It does not come with any program to transfer/clone your current build to the new drive. If you are going to clone the drive, it is honestly less than two hours depending on what kind of drive you are migrating from. This is definitely a recommended drive to get as it has good amount of memory space.

I can open my computer much faster then when I had just a hard drive

Awesome. Hammering this with Zoom university and Engineering programs. Still maintains the R/W speeds

I actually bought this product for replace current OEM SSD.

I bought this to be an OS drive that I load my most played games on. Coming from an 860 EVO SATA SSD, I have to say that I am very impressed.

I love it! Definitely buy again!

I installed this drive and my system feels like brand new. I came from an old HDD and now this is like night and day. Great drive!!

I quadrupled my storage from the 500MB unit I started with. Tough install in my laptop, but thats not really the vendors fault. This runs much cooler than that stock unit and is just about as fast as advertised.

For all those in confusion. I can confirm that it works with the MacBook Pro M1 with an external enclosure.

Ran a benchmark that compares this drive to others of the same model. As you can see, my unit is a fairly significant dropoff to the standard of this SSD, and does not write/read at the advertised speeds.