I have to wonder though, how much does having a fabless ssd sellers matter when their prices are ultimately still pretty much determined by those that have fabs?

Is there meaningful difference in choice at that level? These guys all basically just buy off the shelf controllers and nand, so I can’t imagine there is. More than that, with the number of scandals I remember over the years of massive, performance affecting hardware changes without sufficient notification/change in skus, I don’t hold them in particularly high regard generally.