Samsung T7 Touch 1TB Portable SSD Review

TweakTown's Rating: 90%

The Bottom Line

Hands down, the T7 is the best portable SSD to date from Samsung, but it could use a lower MSRP to get units moving.

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Samsung has had a great run of portable SSDs, all the way back to the T1 in 2015. Since then, connectivity has changed, the bar for performance has risen, and Samsung responded nearly two years ago with the X5. Without a portable solution being launched in 2019, its officially time for Samsung to get back to the table with its latest offering, the T7 Touch.

A lot of portable SSDs are purchased every year, and while most vendors drive home the performance numbers of their solutions, very few talk about data security. With the T7, Samsung wanted to change this by offering a radical new design that takes advantage of biometric security with a fingerprint scanner while still being able to get top-tier performance.

The T7 Touch is offered in the same small form factor design we have become accustomed to. It's available in two colors, silver and black, and three capacity options - 500GB along with 1TB and 2TB. Performance is rated at 1050 MB/s read and 1000 MB/s write, and as you guessed, it uses the USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface with a USB-C connection.

The MSRP of the Samsung T7 Touch in the 1TB capacity comes in at $229.99 with a three-year warranty.

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The packaging for the T7 is fantastic, an image of the drive slicing in from the right with capacity and compatibility along the bottom.

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Along the edge, you will find more compatibility information along with warranty and box contents.

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Unboxing, we have a legacy Type-A to C cable and USB-C cable and, of course, the drive above.

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The exterior of the drive offers a smooth aluminum finish with only a small bump to separate the fingerprint scanner.

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Along the thin edge of the drive, we find the USB-C port.

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Included with the drive is a software utility to set up and manage the security of the drive.

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Testing performance, we go back to CDM. Here we have 1011 MB/s read and 885 MB/s write.

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ATTO shows a pretty consistent drive offering peak performance in both read and write 256K through 64M.

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Price vs. Performance of the T7 Touch comes in the fourth spot in our charts at 85.3%.

The T7 Touch is a conscious upgrade in both performance and security from the T5, but I do like that Samsung decided to stay with its proven small form factor aluminum design, even taking it thinner than the last. The build quality is fantastic, top to bottom, and while the added security software is basic, it does accomplish all that's needed from it in a single interface.

The usability of the T7 Touch has been fantastic. I've had only 2 or 3 times where my fingerprint wouldn't register immediately apart from that very quick in both unlocking and making data available.

The performance of the T7 is at the tops for USB 3.2 Gen 2 solutions at 1011 MB/s read and 885 MB/s write. Taking away from it is the higher than standard MSRP at $229.99, making it $80 more than the competing X8 from Crucial. That said, the T7 Touch is one of the only solutions to have outward-facing security, so for those that need it and don't want to mess with a 1996 Nokia number pad on top of your SSD, this is the drive for you!

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)