Samsung SpinPoint T166

In our roundup of 250 gigabyte drives published a year and a half ago, contenders from Hitachi, Maxtor, Samsung, Seagate, and Western Digital went head-to-head in our comprehensive test suite. Samsung's SpinPoint P120 balanced performance, acoustics, and power draw more adeptly than the competition and forged its way to our newly created "Budget Storage" category on the Leaderboard.

Over the ensuing months, while the 250 GB capacity point continued to see modest reductions in price, it was the once-king-of-the-hill 500-gigabyte sector that tumbled most in price. At the time of this writing, although they have not fallen through the magic $100US price barrier, these half-terabyte units nonetheless represent a sweet combination of capacity and price. Though we followed up with a 500 gigabyte drive roundup shortly after our view of 250-gig drives, we regrettably were unable to include an entry from Samsung. With this review, however, we are pleased to redress the issue with a look at Samsung's SpinPoint T166.