We only buy Intel for staff because: their time is worth a lot, any interruption due to a flaky drive can be expensive (especially if traveling), and to reduce worry. The time for me to research whether another Brand is reliable costs more than just choosing Intel. A no brainer decision.

I.e. the savings on a cheaper drive are not worth the risks.

Backup, always, of course.

Stick to the Pro. The EVO are based on TLC which are cheaper to manufacture and have a reduced life-span.

Kingston used to rebrand Intel SSDs (same controller, just a smaller amouht of flash) for the "value market", so not surprising they were good.

The Samsung drives are poor when used on a NFS server with sync enabled - they are about 4x slower than the Intel 320 drives doing that. When used without sync, the same if no faster than the Intel drives - with the drawback of course that you've probably got corrupt data if you crash or lose power.

If I need customer service for a drive at all, my day is unlikely to get much worse.