Yeah, even the Nikon 50mm 1.4D vs the 50mm 1.4G the difference in image quality is night and day. The D is also tiny compared to the G. Unfortunately, it’s a somewhat immutable fact of physics that good quality optics are big and heavy.

Yeah, honestly, from reading about this, sounds like Sony’s answer to Nikon’s tech that embeds & encrypts the EXIF data in the raw image (and jpeg preview). But in typical Sony fashion its capability is vastly over claimed by fanboiz. 😅

Varies greatly based on encoder. NEVC vs CPU etc

Not asserting this isn’t the case, I’ve not noticed it, but I can’t see why this would be the case for the actual encoding. Decoding I’ve seen it make a difference but that’s mostly the pre-Skylake iGPUs using a poor implementation of QuickSync.

Honestly, for normal people things hard drive is hard drive. If it’s a hard-core high-performance DATABASE, always spinning ZFS pool then MAYBE it’ll matter. But for just storing data, like a normal use case, heck even a heavy normal use case like photo/video storage where you’re caching on an SSD for editing but fairly intensely reading/writing back to the drive, it’s fine.

The only time it’ll probably matter is if it’s someone else’s money, then just get the expensive drives so you don’t get blamed (enterprise), it’s some super intense database or something, or Security systems there are some benitifs for a drive designed to be CONSTANTLY written to.

Can I point out that ‘Smart Devices’ have stopped trying to be Smart, and just trying to Data Harvest.

VPN, Cloud storage, cloud hosting.

I’ve personally just bought what is cheaper $/Gb if they’re broadly equal then features & power, if still locked I have tended towards WD. But I’m not storing anything critical and if a drive failed, I’d be annoyed but that’s about it.