Samsung T7 Touch
A well needed update to a much loved external storage device.
It’s been a while. Samsung took
more than a year to deliver a viable
successor to the very well received
T5. The T7, as it is now known, is
available in two versions; a
plain-vanilla model and one that
packs a fingerprint reader and is
known as the T7 Touch.
Three different capacities are
available (500GB, 1TB, 2TB) and
two colour schemes (black and
silver). Both the T7 and T7 Touch
come with a three-year limited
warranty, Samsung’s Portable SSD
Plus 1.0 software and AES 256-bit
hardware encryption.
The T7 Touch looks very similar
to the T5 but is a tiny bit bigger
and heavier. 85 x 57 x 8.0 mm for
a weight of 58g for the former and
74 x 57.3 x 10.5 mm for a weight of
51g for the latter. The hardware
needed for the biometric feature
explains the gain in weight.
Samsung stuck with the solid
aluminum unibody construction
which fits very snuggly in the
palm of your hand.
The LED square also lights up
with a cool blue glow to keep the
$279, http://www.samsung.com.au
user informed of what the SSD is
doing at a glance. There’s a
Type-C connector to which either
of the two bundled cables can be
connected.
All in all, a very clean and
straightforward product that is
utilitarian while being pleasing on
the eye.
This is where the biggest
difference between the T5 and the
T7 (and the T7 Touch) can be
found. Samsung has swapped the
SATA-based SSD for an NVMe SSD
behind the USB 3.2 Gen 2 bridge to
offer up to significantly better
performance. It is very likely that
the T7 Touch uses sixth-
generation 136-layer V-NAND as
opposed to the T5’s 64-layer
V-NAND.
The T7 Touch came formatted
as exFAT with a usable capacity of
931GB. It had three files on it, one
of which was the bundled
software – the Samsung Portable
SSD Plus software – needed to
enable fingerprinting capabilities.
You can also download the
software as an app to use thedrive with your Android
smartphone (assuming the latter
has a Type-C connector). Setting
up the fingerprint capabilities is
straightforward, as easy as doing
it on a smartphone and so is
adding password protection to the
T7 Touch.
Note that the device needs to be
connected at all times for the
fingerprint reader to work.
Samsung claims that the drive
can achieve read/write speeds of
up to 1.05GBps, which it says, is
about twice what the T5 could
reach. In real life we measured
1032 and 924MBps on
CrystalDiskMark which is not that
far from Samsung’s own readings.The Samsung T7 Touch is an
exquisite piece of technology; no
it won’t prevent hacker groups
backed by nation states from
hacking your storage device but it
will allow you to make it safer.
Desire AthowNot exciting to
look at, but it is
handy and quite
secure.2020EDITOR’S
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