i bought a few smr drives, knowing they were smr. they were cheaper, a lot cheaper than the same amount of space in cmr. used only for static media storage, so that’s not a big deal, really., but holy hell was it slow getting stuff on them initially.
i have a few self-powered externals that are also smr (quite common with those as they use 2.5in notebook hdd). when those things have to start shuffling bits around and rewriting tracks, sustained write speeds fall well under what even usb2 can send.
at the office we have the ones you have to push down–and hold for the water to run. i’ve encountered them elsewhere and you get 10-20 seconds before the water shuts off… ours doesn’t. by the time you get your hand down to the water, it’s shut off.