Samsung T5 Portable SSD Review: Petite & Lightning Fast But Pricey
The latest portable storage drive from Samsung promises faster data transfer speed, and better data security.
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Samsung makes everything from mobile phones to chipsets to storage drives to everything else that goes in them. But more than anything else, the South Korean pioneered portable storage devices with T Series, couple of years back, and in 2018, you get one of those in the form of T5, which is available in 250 and 500GB and 1, 2TB as storage options.
You might be wondering how Samsung manages to pack so much storage space in this form, but more than that, what matters is the cost of owning it. With prices starting from Rs 11,000, we try to tell you why this portable storage device costs you more than the conventional hard disks available in the market.
Pros:
- Ultra-portable design
- Packs high storage in small-sized form factor
- Impressive read and write speeds
- Shock-proof and offers data encryption
Cons:
- Expensive
What’s Good?
Just like its previous versions, the T5 has the looks of a polished product, which still caters to your need for speed, without compromising on its portability. The T5 weighs exactly as the T3 at 51 grams, which is twice the weight of T1 at 26 grams.
The dimensions on the T5 have slightly increased as well, but even with its thickness at 10.55mm, there isn’t much you can complain about. It's got a sturdy metal body and can handle a drop of up to two metres, which makes you feel relieved if any mishap occurs.
The drive supports USB Type C port, which according to Samsung has played a big role in improving its overall speed prowess. The T5, as claimed by Samsung, offers 4.9x times faster speed than an average external hard drive. The T3, last time around, offered 4x times faster speed only.
The drive also comes with optional password protection, with AES 256-bit hardware encryption, which keeps your personal and private data more secure, according to Samsung, and yes, a three year warranty with this device sounds like a good deal.
Now coming to the major aspect of the product, ie speed delivery, and boy, is it fast alright. We tested out the T5 on a Core i7 system with 8GB of RAM and 512GB SSD, and the resulting data transfer speeds were impressive.
While Samsung’s claimed transfer speed with the T5 goes up to 540 MB/sec, we managed to get up to 368MB/sec while transferring 7.65GB of assorted data from the system to the T5.
Storage benchmark apps like Crystaldiskmark gave us read and write speeds of 442MB/sec and 443MB/sec respectively, to show that the worth of this device.
What’s Bad?
While the ‘Good’ section filled up most of our review, it’s essential for us to highlight the biggest catch with buying the T5, ie the price. This device doesn’t come cheap, with prices starting from Rs 11,000 for the 250GB, going up to 65K for the 2TB storage version.
The use of latest NAND memory (storage devices that don’t need power to retain data) and fitting in high amount of storage space on the T Series, ends up with the final product costing more than you’d pay for a traditional 250GB external drive (costs around 3K).
Why Buy It?
If you really need a high-speed and portable storage device then look no further than the Samsung T5. It’s fast, easy to carry at 51 grams, and even smaller than a business card holder. You get this drive in 250GB, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB variants, but the higher storage option you buy, the costlier it will get. You get high data transfer speeds for the price, longer warranty period is a big plus too, and the product is shock-proof.
If the T5 goes over your budget, you can even consider the T1 and T3, which costs you less, but offers near-identical features as the T5.
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