Compatible SSD

Help us out, tell us what year? Depending on year, you may not be able to. As to which is best, that's highly subjective and all drives having their promoters and detractors.

I prefer Samsung and Crucial. But I also have a couple of PNYs and they are good too.

How skilled and confident are you at opening and poking around in the internals of your Mac? Are you willing to risk possible damage? There IS risk involved.

According to a website that has guides on doing exactly what you are wanting to do, the job is "moderately" difficult. To me, that means people who have difficulty replacing an electrical switch might better rethink it.

From the pics I see, it appears to me you do need an NVMe type. As to compatibility, I don't think you'll have a problem, but further research on that is indicated.

I'd give you the website, but I had that edited out when I did once as too risky to do.

I'm not an Amazon stockholder, but they do have a very good return policy. I've used it several times. You can also get advice for other specialized vendors like OWC ... Other Work Computing.

I replaced the Hard drive in a late 2015 21.5" iMac and found it actually quite easy. You had to be meticulous and precise but the steps themselves were not difficult. I'm currently due for a Wednesday deliver of an SSD for my 2016 MacBook Pro; 1TB to replace 256GB SSD. It's coming from OWC. I'm like you, go slow, follow the guide precisely and all will be fine.

This may be what you need, but talk to OWC to confirm: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/ssd/owc/macbook-air/2013-2014-2015

Make sure your MacBook Air is already running at least macOS 10.13+ before installing the third party SSD. If you want to use macOS 12.x Monterey, then you definitely need to install Monterey while still using the original Apple SSD since at the moment it is impossible to install macOS Monterey to a third party SSD if Monterey has never been installed on that computer before.

I highly recommend keeping the original Apple SSD just in case you may ever need it to re-install macOS or in case a future system firmware update fails to install because you are using a third party SSD. Plus if the third party SSD ever develops any issues, you can reinstall the original Apple SSD to help in troubleshooting.

You will only be able to install macOS 10.13+ to the internal SSD when using an NVMe SSD since older versions of macOS do not have the necessary NVMe driver.

Edit: Also make sure to have a good backup before attempting to upgrade macOS on the original Apple SSD.

You should always have frequent and regular backups of your computer and any external media which contains important and unique data. It is impossible to recover accidentally deleted data from an SSD after the Trash has been emptied plus an SSD can fail at any time without any warning signs (even a brand new SSD).

NOTE: The SSD in the MacBook Air is a special design by Apple and you cannot use standard off the shelf NVMe or SATA M.2 drives. There a very few that have exact replacements, OWC being one of them.