[wtallis]

> A fixed product identity for something that materially changes

For the most part, these changes are not "material" in the sense of having a significant impact on the overall performance of the product or its suitability for the intended use cases.

It's mostly the tech enthusiast audience that cares about these changes. That audience is highly susceptible to fixating on "objective" criteria or benchmarks that aren't actually relevant to any of their real-world usage. If you exclude the differences that only show up in synthetic benchmarks specifically crafted to reveal subtle differences in SSD performance, the scope of this issue and the potential instances of fraud are vastly smaller.