One of the biggest names in storage tries its hand at enthusiast SSDs. Seagate may be best known as a hard-disk manufacturer, but the future is solid-state storage, and having seen rivals such as WD find success in solid-state waters, the time has come to step up its efforts and deliver competitive solutions across the board.

There are a couple of ways of achieving that feat. Seagate could follow WD's lead and develop an in-house controller that scales across entry-level and high-end models, but that frankly sounds like a lot of hard work. The alternative is to take a tried-and-trusted controller and place it in drives carrying recognisable Seagate branding. With next-generation PCIe 4.0 looming large, the second option seems the safer bet and has led to the release of four new M.2 drives.