Well, there is always a balance - you want "fast" - it will eat more battery.
If you are willing to "settle" for ~500MB/s read and write speeds (basically SATA III speeds) - you can get some low power consuming SSDs, but that negates the benefit of an NVME drive
Speed really means 2 things here:
High SEQUENTIAL speed - how fast can you transfer a LARGE file from point A to point B (example: from an EXTERNAL SSD or SDXC card TO your INTERNAL SSD - this is where the SLOWEST cog in the chain determines speed - so even if you bench ~1500-2500 MegaBYTES/sec on read and write - you may be capped by your media (size, type, and source of media - your SDXC card probably can't do more than 100-150MB/s; an external SSD via USB 3.0 or 3.1 (depends if it is gen 1 or gen 2) tops out around 400-500 MegaBYTES/sec and a NAS tops out at 120-125MegaBYTES/sec via ethernet (10GB ethernet can do ~800-900MegaBYTES/sec with overhead); you may also have a DAS (Promise tech?) which can go a lot faster depending on the setup of the DAS used
High RANDOM speeds (moving small files at random from one location on the SSD to another within the same SSD or to another medium) - this is where an SSD shines - so the 4K RANDOM read and write (4k is the file size - aka relatively SMALL file size) is in my opinion a more important measure than the sequential writes and reads; the higher the random 4k read, the better (example - 40MegaBYTES/sec random read used to be cutting edge of reads for a long time in NVME drives - but for the past year BOTH the Phison 12 and SM2262/EN controllers have been hitting 60-70MegaBYTES a second, which is the new benchmark. Same goes for random write speeds - 70-100Megabytes a second was considered great, but now we are hitting 150MegaBYTES plus!!! ) - it is important to state that you want to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges - that is - compare ALL numbers at QUEU DEPTH (QD) of 1 = QD1 - there is no point in using QD32 numbers as you will NEVER hit those numbers - (well, "never" means UNLESS you are running a powerful server and serving LOTS of data (either randomly or sequentially) to LOTS of other computers on the network)
So, look at the charts and make an informed decision. - look at Power Consumption chart and also the Power Efficiency chart. User Gilles_Polysoft did an EXCELLENT job-that is a TON of info to sort and organize and color code!! BRAVO!!!
Based on that data, it would appear that one of the best choices would be an Sabrent Rocket(Phison 12 controller -I have it and like it, but i do not think it adds too much real world value other than having good/not great bench numbers) and the Adata SX8200 NVME SSD (silicon motion 2262 controller) - pick the size you want but keep in mind that generally speaking 1TB models seem to outperform 2TB models, all other things being equal (this may a moot point as a few MB/sec extra may not make any difference in real life scenarios)
Oh, one more thing, IF you leave your laptop plugged in the whole time and do not need to take it on the road or unplug it from the power frequently, this may be a moot point - simply BUY the best-performing SSD at the SIZE you NEED and forget all about power efficiency and so on.
Lastly, you may also consider an OEM SSD (SSUAX, SSUBX and "Polaris"controllers) from APPLE - you can find those on Ebay and other places.
Beetstech has a great write up on what controller is found where.
https://beetstech.com/blog/apple-proprietary-ssd-ultimate-guide-to-specs-and-upgrades#hdr-15
I do not know what software you use - you may choose to google "does x software benefit from fast random or sequential read" or something like that.
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