Ain't no one got time for that.
I have YT Premium so without ads I found the video to be informative albeit a little slow paced. He goes through debunking various theories including the smart data being incorrect or misinterpreted.
Maybe it's a problem on 8GB units (and to that Richie video, my assessment about 8 vs 16 is that 8 shouldn't exist. That just isn't enough memory). On my 16GB device I've written 5TB despite installing all the OS betas, and pounding on XCode 13 betas all day. That puts it at 1% wear. I'm not too concerned.
The "TBW warrantied" claims are not so meaningful. On every single NVMe, I have gotten at least 2-4x the rated TBW warrantied without encountering ANY issues, whatsoever.
The NVMe spec classifies the rating as being able to retain data, powered off, for 1 year. If your macbook is connected to power more than once in a year, you wouldn't expect to lose data. So real ratings are higher than claimed in the video.
I'd expect the Mac's NVMes to work for 4-8 years of heavy usage, before failure.
If you make me pick:
• I have nearly zero money to spend: MX500 2.5" or BX500.
• Value: Kingston A2000
• Balanced: WD SN750
• Endurance / professional scratch disk use: Samsung 970 Pro (NOT 980 Pro! Tlc instead of MLC), or Gigabyte Aorus, or Corsair MP600
These are consumer NVMes for desktop pc/workstation usage. If you're building servers, you probably want to consider server-grade hardware.
2. This video guesses what NAND Apple is using instead of opening the case and looking. They also make assumptions about the endurance given that Apple doesn't specify it.
3. Total speculation: Heavy swapping combined with 16 KB pages is very bad?
It only shows that excessive writing is still reported. Whether it still happens that's another matter.
