amazon SAMSUNG T7 TOUCH reviews
The speed is twice as fast as the old version but still possesses a compact body, along with fingerprint security features available on the market for the first time, Samsung T7 Touch can be said to be one of the portable SSD models that are worth buying the current.
Following the success of the T5 mobile SSD model, at the CES 2020 event that took place earlier this year, Samsung released a successor version called the T7 Touch. Not only are the improvements in appearance and speed inside, but the T7 Touch also attracts attention as the first portable SSD model equipped with a fingerprint sensor, works like on smartphones and laptops but you still daily use.
The T7 Touch has a total of three capacity options including 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB, in silver and black colors. BiaReview version on hand in this article is 500GB.
Design
Today’s portable SSD models all aim for minimalism in design, high mobility in mobility, and the T7 Touch is no exception.
Like the predecessor T5, the Samsung T7 Touch still owns a rectangular design with rounded corners, wearing a solid aluminum metal shell. However, measuring 85 x 57 x 8.0 mm, weighing 58g, the T7 Touch is a bit heavier and thinner than the T5, 74 x 57.3 x 10.5 mm, and 51g respectively. The hardware for fingerprint security features is, obviously, responsible for that “weight gain”.
For readers to easily imagine, T7 Touch is still very small, not even with my name card, and you can easily bring it with you at any time. The metal shell, according to Samsung, helps the T7 Touch to withstand a drop from a height of 2 meters.
The biggest highlight of the T7 Touch’s design is undoubtedly the fingerprint sensor, next to the familiar Samsung logo. This sensor has a flat surface, surrounded by a blue LED strip that indicates waiting for the user to scan a fingerprint. No, you don’t change the color or change this LED effect to suit your RGB PC set.
To set up fingerprints and security in general, we’ll need to use Samsung’s software, available on the drive for installation on PCs and Play Store for Android – currently not available for iOS. You can set up to 4 fingerprints for T7 Touch, much more convenient than the T5 if you share the drive with both family and friends, and you do not worry about forgetting the password when using it. But also note, if you forget the password, there will be no way to delete fingerprints or reset the password yourself, you will have to bring it to Samsung to handle.
For fast transfer speeds, USB-C is the “main key” for portable SSDs. Inside the box, Samsung comes bundled with two USB C-to-A and C-To-C cables, so you can use the T7 Touch for almost any mobile device. A thoughtful, yet reasonable move for products in this price range. If given the option, I’d want Samsung to give the cable a bit longer, give more love to those with broken USB ports in the front of the case, and having to plug in the back like me.
Hardware
This is the biggest difference between the T7 Touch and the predecessor T5. Saying goodbye to SATA, Samsung has switched to NVMe with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard and uses the new 92-layer 3D V-NAND memory instead of the 64-layer on the T5. According to Samsung, the T7 Touch achieved read and write speeds (sequentially) up to 1,050 MB / s and 1,000 MB / s, almost double that of the T5.
The T7 Touch comes with a 3-year warranty from Samsung, but the company does not disclose life span details (TeraByte Written). Even so, for nearly every SSD on the market today, even if you read and write large amounts of data every day, it can take several years to reach the “death” threshold of a drive.
where can you get a SAMSUNG T7 TOUCH online
SAMSUNG T7 Touch Portable SSD 1TB – Up to 1050MB/s – USB 3.2 External Solid State Drive, Black (MU-PC1T0K/WW): Buy it now
Samsung T7 Touch Portable SSD – 2 TB – USB 3.2 Gen.2 External SSD Metallic Black (MU-PC2T0K/WW): Buy it now
Samsung T7 Touch Portable SSD – 500 GB – USB 3.2 Gen.2 External SSD Metallic Black (MU-PC500K/WW): Buy it now
Samsung T7 Touch Portable SSD – 2 TB – USB 3.2 Gen.2 External SSD Metallic Silver (MU-PC2T0S/WW): Buy it now
Samsung T7 Touch Portable SSD – 1 TB – USB 3.2 Gen.2 External SSD Metallic Black (MU-PC1T0K/WW): Buy it now
Performance and real experience
Once you have set up a fingerprint or password, you will have to authenticate each time you connect the T7 Touch to the devices. This is also the time when the fingerprint sensor of T7 Touch “shines”, when the authentication process takes place quickly, accurately, and conveniently.
If no authentication or authentication fails, T7 Touch will be in a read-only state. Samsung should have had a solution to make this status a little more useful, like popping out the message “This is xxx SSD, please return” or something like that. If you forget the password without fingerprints, the T7 Touch will look like an expensive paperweight, thanks to 256-bit AES encryption.
Measuring the performance of Samsung T7 Touch, BiaReview uses a system including:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Motherboard: MSI B450m Mortar Max
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x8GB 3200MHz
Test device: Samsung T7 Touch, USB-C Gen 3.2 connection
First, for the copy speed in practice, I use two sets of data: One is 129 JPG image files over 10MB / file, 1.41GB total, the second is the installer for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a total capacity of 21.4 GB. As a result, T7 Touch reached a maximum speed of about 470 MB / s when copying images, and maintained at 200 MB / s when copying game data, with a cache of about 20 GB.
Moving on to the popular benchmark tools, with Crystal Disk Mark, T7 Touch achieved sequential read and write speeds of 975 MB / s and 926 MB / s, quite close to Samsung’s announcement and twice as fast as regular SATA drives. This number will vary slightly depending on whether the system you use is AMD or Intel, and higher capacity versions usually perform better. Meanwhile, the 4KiB random data read and write speed seems to be on par with the T5, but not by much.
With AS SSD, this benchmark uses uncompressed data instead of compressed like Crystal Disk Mark so the results are usually low and closer to reality.
ATTO Disk Benchmark is software that includes a series of tests to determine the read and write speed of hard drives with many different size data packets. The T7 Touch achieved ideal speeds with an I / O Size of 128KB or higher and remained stable for the rest of the test.
In terms of gaming performance, I still believe in the benchmark engine of Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, with the ability to measure screen load times up to milliseconds. With a total of 5 levels in the test, the T7 Touch loads 16,216 seconds.
The aluminum shell design of the T7 Touch initially made me skeptical about the operating temperature, but they have been removed in real use. It is known that Samsung has integrated two heat control technologies, Dynamic Thermal Guard, which automatically lowers performance when it detects overheating, and an ePCM (Encapsulated Phase Change Materials) sheet that absorbs and radiates heat. During the test, my T7 Touch never went above 42 degrees Celsius.
Summary
Inheriting the small advantages of the T5 model, improving speed, and setting a new standard for security on mobile hard drives thanks to fingerprint security and 256-bit AES encryption, the T7 Touch is one of the SSD models worth buying at the moment.
The biggest hurdle of the T7 Touch is the price tag. If you love the compactness and high speed of this SSD, Samsung also offers the T7 model without a fingerprint sensor at a slightly cheaper price, but the hassle of entering a password every time you use the drive. It will make you realize that the trade-off is not worth it.