> But why won't the manufacturers let you choose? The real answer is clearly planned obsolescence.

No, it's not. The real answer is that customers (Even B2B) are extremely price sensitive.

Look, I know the prevailing view is that lower quality is some evil corporate plan to get you to purchase replacements on a more frequent basis, but the real truth is that consumers are price sensitive, short sighted, and often purchasing without full knowledge. There's a race to the bottom on price, which means quality suffers. You put your typical customer in front of two blenders at the appliance store, one is $20 and the other is $50, most customers will pick the $20 one, even when armed with the knowledge that the $50 version will last longer.

When it comes to QLC vs SLC, buyers don't care. They just want the maximum storage for the smallest price.

For your specific example, I would buy the $20 because I would assume the $50 is just as bad.

Having built computers casually for some time, I never recall being told by the marketing department or retailer that one kind of SSD was more reliable than another. The only thing that is ever advertised blatantly is speed and capacity. I saw the kind of SSD sometimes, but it was never explained what that meant to a consumer (the same way SMR hard drives were never advertised as having slow reads)

If I saw "this kind of SSD is reliable for 10 years and the other one is reliable for 2" then I may have made a decision based on that.