You have to use the right cables to get the best performance. Samsung X5 with the Thunderbolt 3 cable is the fastest SSD I have. There may be newer drive coming out for the TB4 protocol but I haven’t seen any. For regular USB-C, which is plenty fast for most things, the Samsung T5 and T7s are very good. For size I love the SanDisks, though I wish they came in colors so you could tell the sizes apart. 2 TB in your pocket, half the size of a phone, is amazing. There are probably a lot of others, but that’s what’s been working for me.