It's SMR, it'll be slow as hell and rearrange itself sometimes for days if you don't let it sleep. But there is no choice for 2.5" drives, at least if you want a somehow large size (and even for many worthless smaller sizes nowadays).
Data Hoarder
We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
Is that all it is? I just checked a list of CMR and SMR drives and my other Passport drives are also listed as SMR but run faster than this new one.
If you're using Windows you can disable or increase the sleep timeout from the advanced power options in the old Control Panel power plan options.