Most of the updates like this in the SSD market are actually pretty harmless—switching a SATA drive from 64L to 96L TLC generally isn't going to change the performance or power characteristics enough to care about, and is more likely to be beneficial than harmful. But when they start introducing QLC NAND into a product line that originally was TLC-only, that's a problem.

I believe this is a known technique in mass-produced markets. Called 'debasing' or something like that. Even new cars have more bells and whistles when first released while as the model gets a stead consumer base the manufacturer might reduce accessories or get cheaper versions, etc.

Why does that happen?

And that work needs to be paid for.

And nobody buys review magazines any more.

And advertising revenue on review sites can only pay for a small handful of SKUs to be reviewed. So only the sexiest, mass-marketest units get reviewed.

And the vendors fly under the review radar by flooding the market with so many variants that there isn’t enough funding to review more than a tiny fraction of them.

And by the time any headway is made into reviewing current models, new ones are released and suddenly nobody is interested in the old ones, further squeezing the window of opportunity for advertising revenue. And eliminating entirely the incentive for long-term testing.

Meanwhile, review sites realise they can get paid more in bribes/freebies/access than in advertising, and either outright compromise their reviews or only report the hits and never the misses.

And so consumers are flying blind, trying to extract signal from the noise of furious churn.

For performance I think the problem is that not every single capacity is reviewed. Typically the top capacity in each range.

At least in IT we have Stallman-esque zealots who refuse to be bribed. I don't think we have the equivalent in other markets unfortunately.