The Best M.2 Solid-State Drives for 2021

Under the hoods of the newest, skinniest laptops (and in the hollows of the latest desktop-PC motherboards), solid-state storage has undergone a transformation. Even if you're a close observer of all things tech, it's understandable if you didn't even realize it was happening.

That's because the whole idea is to make the storage hardware itself close to invisible. Solid-state drives (SSDs) have largely migrated from the slab-like shapes of familiar hard drives into little sticks of 

memory that offer much the same capacities. And, in some cases, they have picked up speed along the way.

The traditional SSD that you buy and install in a desktop PC, or in place of a hard drive in a laptop, uses what's known as the "2.5-inch drive" form factor. (In actuality, the drives are about 2.75 inches 

wide.) These SSDs have the same dimensions that laptop-style hard drives do. SSD makers adopted this standard size to make SSDs compatible with existing laptop designs. (They could configure laptops 

with the choice of a hard drive or an SSD without any retooling.) Desktop PCs, meanwhile, could accommodate SSDs of this size with little fuss. You could mount them in a 3.5-inch drive bay using a 

simple bracket. Over time, too, desktop PC chassis have evolved to gain their own bays and mounting points for 2.5-inch drives.