[alias_neo]

You're probably right, I forget which way around it was, but if I was to take an educated guess, I'd say that SMR on the lower capacity models lets them cut costs because the added density of SMR lets them use fewer platters?

[dml2135]

I'm not sure why SMR would save costs on lower capacity drives but not higher capacity drives. It may be a technical reason, but I'd also find a corporate-strategic reason to be plausible -- i.e., they were like, any consumers that give a shit about something as technical as SMR vs CMR are probably the ones buying our high-capacity drives.