2TB - Crucial MX500 2.5" SATA III Solid State Drive ( up to 560/510 MB/s) - £98.80 delivered Using Code @ CCL Computers / eBay

Crucial has changed the nand used in MX500 since it was launched in 2018. Apparently durability has gone down after 2020.

Apparently, 2TB and 4TB models are shipping with QLC nand in Asia markets last year. It may now be available in EU given the lower cost.

above image is from techpowerup website posted in Dec 2022. (edited)

Yes, if you have an NVMe M.2 slot always better to go for an NVMe drive with similar config (TLC NAND + DRAM cache) if the price is close enough (like the very good Kingston mentioned above).

As well as better sequential performance, one less cable to keep tidy. (edited)

Had this drive in the pro for years, definitely worth it for the extra storage and it is faster loading on the pro I found.

Good as primary backup for personal media files, make sure though to make a backup of backup ideally on a HDD

Yes, that's the next best price posted several days ago.

The Samsung devices you mention, until very recently, had a fatal firmware flaw that always corrupted data once the max capacity had been reached and cell over-write had begun- don't believe me? Go Google. PS if you use Samsung flash, please check and update your firmware - many users only slowly fill their flash device, so the issue may not show for even years, but it will happen unless you update your device.

Ordinary users are rarely aware of the actual issues big brands are known to have- relying too much on reviews from outlets that, let us say, are neither true users of tech, nor free from paid brand bias. However, the Crucial MX 500 series have proven to be a very good SSD product in long term use, and I'd guess you'd opt for them over similar priced SSDs at a similar price. This has more to do with the fact that tech improvements now focus on NVME, and the last changes to SSD tech involved downgrades to QLC flash.

Without a doubt, Crucial expected to have retired the MX 500 devices long before this moment in time- but the MX 500 is solid from a design POV, and the components it uses get cheaper and cheaper with time. The SATA spec is locked in stone with no sign of either AMD or Intel replacing it with something better (they've tried and failed in the past, and no longer care on the desktop- serious innovations are now server systems only). So 500MB/s is as good as it gets, a trivial SSD target today.

20TB?! I've multiple drives of that size

I do yeah, Speed depends on the PCIe Lane generation.

A x4 PCIe 2.0 lane will run at 2GB/s While a 3.0 will do 4GB/s.