> I'd use a SATA M.2 if needed to save 40% of the cost on the same size SSD. Or just a random thumb drive I have around. There are now lots of low-end M.2 NVMe

> I'd use a SATA M.2 if needed to save 40% of the cost on the same size SSD. Or just a random thumb drive I have around. There are now lots of low-end M.2 NVMe SSDs on the market, and M.2 SATA SSDs are becoming uncommon. So there's no price remaining price advantage for M.2 SATA over M.2 NVMe—certainly not 40%—and it is not uncommon to find M.2 NVMe sale prices that are better than any M.2 SATA SSD price, since the more popular NVMe SSDs get better and more frequent discounts than the niche M.2 SATA SSDs. And the M.2 SSDs on the market with the lowest absolute cost (rather than per GB) are usually the Intel Optane Memory 16GB NVMe SSDs that were intended for use as cache devices, but have enough capacity for lots of embedded Linux use cases while also outperforming SATA SSDs of any capacity.