You can get Mac Studio 3rd party "SSDs" for less than half the price Apple charges for the same storage, with the same performance, they even use the same flash chips!

Where are you getting this information? Curious because I can't find any evidence that Apple has "much, much, much faster" storage. If anything, Apple storage looks mediocre at best.

For example: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m4-mbp-ssd-speeds.24422....

Compare with: https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/ssds/crucial-t710....

While it is not an Apple to Oranges comparison, T710 seems 80% faster for writing big files, and for $279.99 - $299.99 for 2TB this is still much cheaper than whatever Apple is offering.

If you have a better reference (specially if there is something that is cross platform), I would be interested.

I wouldn’t mind some cheap slow storage. SD card / usb-c mini plugs aren’t really great option.

Evidence?