Samsung T7 Shield portable SSD review: Ready & rugged
Dexerto The Samsung T7 Shield is the latest in the line of “rugged” storage for those who are out and about, and we’ve put it through its paces to see if it’s worth the price.
The world of portable storage is not limited to old, 3.5-inch spinning hard drives any longer. Thanks to the dawn of speedy SSDs, you can now get faster storage than ever before, in a more pocketable form factor, too.
Thanks to the form factor of NVMe drives, you can get lovely slim storage, though not all of them would be appropriate for taking out and about for a shoot, or while trying to edit footage down while on location. This is much more suitable for content creators than gamers. Though, it may be great for those looking to hook up an extra drive to your Steam Deck, since it so easily fits in a bag.
Key specs
- Capacity: 1TB, 2TB, 4TB (Tested)
- Max sequential read: 986 MB/s
- Max sequential write: 993 MB/s
- Warranty: 3 years
- Price: $109.99 (1TB)
- Release date: Late October 2022
Design
Dexerto The Samsung T7 Shield stands out from the crowd of cleaner portable SSD lineup with its unique exterior shell, which is encased in rugged ribbed rubber material. This material is sandwiched over the exterior housing and is non-removable. The tough exterior coating ensures that the Samsung T7 Shield can sustain drops of up to three meters, in addition to being IP65 water and dust resistant.
Though the USB-C port is not covered by any shielding, its form-factor means that you’ll be able to take it with you almost anywhere. . We wish that the rubber material didn’t get quite as dirty as it did, though our review sample had been previously used, and came with all of the lint on the unit before we even began testing.
After a few days of living in our bag, the Samsung T7 Shield, alongside the USB-C cable included in the box got appropriately dusty, as the rubber material quickly accumulates dust and lint upon its surface.
What really matters, though, is the connection interface that this SSD uses. The SSD itself uses an NVMe interface, which hooks up via a USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard. A USB-C to C connection is included, as well as a USB-A cable, too.
It’s a slim, portable package that’s perfect to take almost anywhere: as long as you don’t mind the dust accumulation on the rubber sleeve.
Performance
Dexerto The Samsung T7 Shield comes in several flavors, but we tested the 4TB model of the drive. We decided to put the drive through its paces using CrystalDiskMark to test out both the maximum peak read and write speeds of the device when hooked up to a fully-featured USB-C port.
- Maximum sequential read: 986 MB/s
- Maximum sequential write: 993 MB/s
The Maximum speeds of the SSD are rated at 1,050MB/s, which we were unable to replicate in our benchmarks. Though, real-world performance will always vary from the manufacturer’s ideal testing scenario.
We also compared the drive against a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD tested inside of a Sabrent enclosure. This managed to achieve a slightly higher result, at 992 MB/s sequential reads and 1027 MB/s sequential write, making the T7 Shield look like a very viable option, especially for portable use.
We also put the drive through its paces by editing a file on the drive in Premiere Pro. The Samsung T7 Shield was able to achieve fantastic performance when scrubbing through a 50GB file without any issues whatsoever, making this a superbly viable option for those looking to edit on the go.
Gaming performance
While this is not a gaming drive, we paired the Samsung T7 shield alongside a Razer Blade 16 containing Cyberpunk 2077 to see if there were any issues with running games off of the drive. As expected, this speedy drive managed to achieve great results without any performance hitches to speak of. This makes it an excellent contender for anyone who wishes to get a little bit of extra storage alongside their gaming laptop.
Should you buy it?
Dexerto The Samsung T7 Shield starts at an accessible price, and considering the build quality of the device itself, it’s a bargain, especially for creators. While its gaming uses also have some function, this SSD is designed with portability for location shoots in mind, and with a staggering capacity of up to 4TB, it’s well worth the price.
The verdict – 4/5
When it comes to a rugged portable SSD, you’re not going to find much better on the market than the Samsung T7 Shield. It’s got the speed, it’s got the capacity, and it has the killer portability factor built into it, to boot.
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