At a Glance: Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch Review

Samsung’s Portable SSD T7 Touch is an unusual entry into the external SSD market. Samsung prioritized security with this drive by designing it with a fingerprint sensor. Let’s take a closer look.

Design

The Portable SSD T7 Touch looks nearly identical to Samsung’s older Portable SSD T5 drives. Measuring just 0.3 x 3.3 x 2.2 inches and weighing in at a meager two ounces, this drive is exceedingly small and easy to carry around in your pocket. The key difference is the aforementioned fingerprint sensor, which takes the form of a noticeable square on one side of the drive.

You can configure the fingerprint sensor using Samsung’s Portable SSD software, which comes pre-loaded onto the drive. This will enable you to register multiple fingerprints and it also gives you the option of setting a password to access the drive. Afterward, you won’t be able to access any data on the SSD without first unlocking it via one of these two methods.

Utilizing a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, the Portable SSD T7 Touch supports transferring data at speeds of up to 1,050MB/s.

Benchmarks

Our sister site PCMag tested one of these drives against many similar products in a few benchmark tests. Starting with PCMag’s custom folder transfer test, the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch performed fairly well and landed in second place.

The Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch also comes in second when tested with the BlackMagic 3.1 software with a large lead over several of the other tested drives. But the T7 pales in comparison with Samsung’s Portable SSD X5, which outperformed all competing drives with more than a 2x performance lead.

Conclusion

Samsung lists the 500GB model of its Portable SSD T7 Touch for sale at $129.99, whereas the 1TB model retails for $229.99. These prices are roughly average, with several external SSDs selling for both higher and lower than the T7 Touch.

If you are interested in the extra security features, Samsung’s Portable SSD T7 Touch is a sensible external SSD for the price. But if you just want an external SSD with solid performance and a more appetizing price tag, then consider either Adata’s SE800 1TB for $189.99 or Crucial’s X8 1TB for $164.95. Both offer similar performance at a lower price, which makes them better options if you aren’t as concerned about security.

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