[Brian]

Samsung’s 2TB SpinPoint F3 EcoGreen (officially, the Samsung HD203WI) first made its way to retailers’ inventories earlier this year, and has quietly been gaining ground in the eco-aware desktop drive market since that time. Breaking with manufacturers’ standard operating procedures for launching a high-capacity/low-power drive, you won’t find much marketing hoopla about the F3EG--even a press release and basic product overview proved a bit hard to track down. If the newest enviro-friendly SpinPoint lacks the luxury of rival Western Digital’s “green” branding juggernaut, however, that doesn’t mean that the F3EG is any less qualified as a green option.

Full Review

[pico1180]

for whatever reason, newegg sells the open box variant for $75 + $6 shipping. i have purchased 4 of them so far. i really like them.

[Brian]

Hard to argue with that price isn't it? I'd be a little nervous that they're returns, but I'm sure there's no such shenanigans going on.

[pico1180]

i always worry too when i buy an open box, but as long as it has the factory warranty, i am fine with it.

i had zero confidence in the LPs they replaced. weird noises, long spin up time. the made me nervous. i could never find anything wrong with them, but i wanted to get rid of them.

the f3eg's are much more quiet and spin up way faster. however, i do notice they are significantly slower.

[Brian]

Yeah, they're not great performers, but that's generally not the role they're tasked for. Quiet, low-power operation is what they're good at.

[dkazaz]

One area where these drives excel compared to the competition is price. They are typically 15% cheaper sometimes more and this seems to be the case in most regions of the world. This is not important when one is buying one drive, but for those ordering say 5 drives for a RAID NAS, this makes a difference of $/€ 100 in total cost.

This post has been edited by dkazaz: 02 August 2010 - 03:16 AM