PC World - USA (2021-06)

66 PCWorld JUNE 2022

REVIEWS SAMSUNG T7 SHIELD SSD

Though the Shield lacks the Touch’s

fingerprint reader, it can still be password

secured using Samsung’s Portable SSD

software. Of course, you must then install said

software on any computer you want to access

the drive from. That’s certainly not as handy as

a simple finger scan, but workable.

PERFORMANCE

The Samsung T7 Shield showed a

noticeable performance improvement over

its T7 Touch predecessor, especially when it

came to writing files. Then again, our Shield

test unit was 2TB, where the Touch was

500GB. This will make a difference,

especially during long writes as the drive

can treat more NAND as single-bit/level,

SLC secondary cache.

We recently switched to the latest

CrystalDiskMark, version 8.04, and a new

testbed so these charts are not direct

comparable with those for previous drives.

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Sequential Write (Q=32, T=1)

875

931

1,059

Sequential Read (Q=32, T=1)

Samsung T7 Shield

LaCie Portable SSD

Samsung T7 Touch

1,070

1,052

1,0 92

CrystalDiskMark 6

MBps

SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

Total Time

553

509

487

48GB Folder Write

48GB Folder Read

48GB Write

48GB Read

48GB Transfers

Seconds

215

175

182

152

165

160

122

90

80

64

79

65

Samsung T7 Shield

LaCie Portable SSD

Samsung T7 Touch

SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

450GB Write

1,354

974

762

450GB Single File Write

Seconds

Samsung T7 Shield

LaCie Portable SSD

Samsung T7 Touch

The two drives the Shield is compared to

below were retested, however. That said,

CDM 8 demonstrates that noticeable write

speed improvement I just spoke of. (Right-

click on images and choose “Open image in

new tab” to see full-size versions.)