It's long been conventional wisdom that you'd have to be crazy to buy anything but Intel when it comes to SSDs. This study isn't too surprising, in that regard.
I think it's more "buy only Intel if you have crazy reliability requirements and no periodic backups." For a typical user who just wants their stuff to load faster, it doesn't really matter: laptops shut down gracefully when they run out of power and power outages don't happen that often.
We only buy Intel for staff because: their time is worth a lot, any interruption due to a flaky drive can be expensive (especially if traveling), and to reduce worry. The time for me to research whether another Brand is reliable costs more than just choosing Intel. A no brainer decision.
I.e. the savings on a cheaper drive are not worth the risks.
The Samsung drives are poor when used on a NFS server with sync enabled - they are about 4x slower than the Intel 320 drives doing that. When used without sync, the same if no faster than the Intel drives - with the drawback of course that you've probably got corrupt data if you crash or lose power.
I had one that went bad in less than 24 hours (my only SSD that needed a warranty claim). I tried to return it to them - filled out form, still had to call them and talk. In the end the guy suggested it would be better for me (much faster) to return it to Amazon than work the return thru intel.
