CONCLUSION

   Roughly 3 years ago when the first 2.5" hybrid drives made their debut in the market i started wondering why manufacturers decided to focus in that area instead of offering the same technology but with the much larger capacity 3.5" drives. True 3.5" drives may not fit in laptops but that's also one of strange things about their choice since nobody wants to have better performance in a laptop than in a desktop system not to mention that even today 2.5" drives are limited in capacity (up to 2TB) while there are 3.5" ones with capacities up to 3 times larger (6TB). Some say that manufacturers chose that path in order to not jeopardize their main market which is focused towards desktop users even if they had invested in improving 3.5" drives things couldn't had gone wrong as they didn't with 2.5" ones at least not in terms of hardware. Regardless todays tests show that the Desktop SSHD model does offer a good performance increase with frequent accessed data even compared to Seagate’s flagship enterprise drive line (Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V3 aka Constellation ES.3) and in the end that's what matters (although I’m still waiting to see more than just 8GB of MLC in such drives). Its rotational speed of 5900RPM is something i can't really explain when the other two models in the Desktop SSHD line spin at 7200RPM but even so the performance of the drive is very good (perhaps since the 4TB model uses 4 plates it would increase heat if spinning at 7200RPM but that's just a quick hypothesis).

   Price-wise the new Desktop SSHD 4TB model sits between the consumer oriented Barracuda and the enterprise class Enterprise Capacity 3.5 v3 drives and so it currently retails for USD215.50 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 170Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). Of course as stated in past reviews hybrid drive technology is far from being perfect and one of the reasons is the small amount of NAND flash used (for example just 8GB for an 4TB drive is way too low) although strictly for OS use it should be sufficient to load all primary system files. Seagate just never ceases to dish out something new and with the release of the very first 3.5" hybrid drive in the market they have done so once again. Overall the Desktop SSHD 4TB model is probably the next best thing to enterprise grade hard disk drives currently and so it really goes without saying that it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Ideal For OS Use (SSD-Like Performance For Cached Files)
- Very Good Overall Performance
- Capacity (Up To 4TB)
- Temperatures/Noise Levels
- 3 Years Warranty
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- 5900RPM (Slower Performance To The 1/2TB Models)