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At just under £140 (about $220, or AU$300) from MobyMemory, this drive is surprisingly affordable, managing to offer one of the cheapest cost per TB of this category.
The Toshiba 2TB Canvio Basics currently runs at a £30 per TB price point (Amazon) while the M3 Portable hits £35 per TB, making it even cheaper than the category's former capacity champion, the Toshiba 3TB Canvio Basics we reviewed a few weeks ago, which is currently available from £126 from Amazon (about $200, or AU$270).
We liked
The Samsung M3 Portable is a flagship device which is affordable, and relatively fast despite using SMR, plus it has enough storage capacity to fit a billion songs (or MP3 tracks). We couldn't fault its design and it comes with an adequate software package.
We disliked
There's hardly anything to dislike about this drive. Once you understand the way SMR works, you can't really criticise the poor performance for random writes.
Final verdict
The Samsung M3 Portable is a fantastic product despite its slightly boring appearance. Seagate has keenly priced this SMR-capable drive and its sheer value for money should make it popular amongst those craving for storage.
Seagate's own Backup Plus 4TB USB 3.0 drive might be its only real competitor. Since they probably share the same drive, it is likely that they will perform similarly. That drive is slightly more expensive but comes with a useful Mobile Backup App and two years' subscription to OneDrive cloud-based storage with 200GB. That's worth £4 a month or £96 (about $150, or AU$200) over the duration of the subscription.
Note that this drive is also available as the P3 Portable with a slightly different form factor. This sample was provided by Samsung and as always (and especially with drives of this capacity), I would strongly urge you to back up your hard disk drive.
