Samsung T7 Shield Review - Samsung's Durable External SSD

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi everyone ada here and today i'm going to talk about a brand new external ssd from samsung the t7 shield it is actually launching today and this time around samsung decided to fully focus on durability so this little drive is supposed to be waterproof it is supposed to be dust proof and it is even supposed to be drop proof so it should be a perfect option for anyone that takes their external ssd wherever they go or just simply use the ssd in situations where it might be damaged whatever those may be now the t7 series isn't really new it has been around for about two years now and while they are still the most sold external ssds pretty much everywhere in the world they were never the fastest drives you could buy so let's see how this one performs and if it's worth considering it all let's begin this video is brought to you by seasonic and their prime series power supplies these top quality power supplies are very efficient they're whisper quiet extremely reliable and my go-to choice for most of my test rigs and builds around here and to make the deal even sweeter seasonic wraps it all up in a cozy 12 year long warranty check them out using the links in the description below the t7 shield looks only slightly larger than the original t7 but it is a lot thicker and a lot heavier it weighs almost 100 grams while the original is at 57 and it is also on the heavy side if we compare it to a bunch of other drives i've tested so far now a big part of that extra weight are the materials that they use to make it extra durable it has a very strong robust aluminum body that is then completely covered with rubber and it has two barriers around the usb connection for added protection against water and against dust so you can actually survive drops of up to three meters of height temps from -40 to 85 degrees celsius and it has an ip65 certification for water and for dust resistance so it can actually handle a lot of extreme outdoor conditions as well as an accidental water or exactly wine spill around the house now design wise i think it is a pretty elegant looking drive even though it has that rubber layer all the labels are on the side keeping the rest of the drive nice and clean and it actually doesn't pick up fingerprints easily so it doesn't really look dirty the second you touch it like the sundisk extreme pro for example so i have the blue and the cream version right here but there is also a traditional black one available as well and in terms of capacity you can pick between one or two terabyte versions and unfortunately there is no word of the four terabyte version just yet now on the side there's a usb type-c connection and an activity led and samsung included a separate usb type-a and a type-c cable they're using a 10 gigabit usb 3.2 gen 2 connection which is fast enough for most systems but it would have been nicer if they updated to a 20 gigabit connection instead now on the box itself it says it is compatible for pcs macs and mobile devices but honestly most ssds that i've tested so far kind of work on most devices anyway so like any other option on the market this will work on a playstation xbox or on video cameras that support recording on an ssd so compatibility is not something that you should worry about when it comes to this drive but when it comes to hardware encryption a lot of manufacturers actually have decided to drop this feature completely and i kind of really like that samsung continues to offer it so with their software you can actually easily password protect and encrypt your sensitive data now keep in mind if you constantly want to lock and unlock your data on different machines all the time i do think that the t7 touch with the fingerprint sensor is just much easier and quicker to use because you don't have to use the software but of course if you choose that one then you will lose the extra durability you will get with the t7 shield but let's look at that performance i'm going to start with the pc mark 10 data drive benchmark and this is actually a very nice and a very quick test that is meant to replicate a fairly light use of your drive so those are the things like working with documents photos and applications now the first t7 wasn't really known for its amazing performance and this new t7 shield doesn't seem to perform very different from the original now to be honest any ssd is going to do these tasks just fine so if you just open documents or edit some photos you cannot really tell the difference between most of these drives in the list right here but that is also not really an excuse for samsung not to show any improvement and not to get a bit higher up in this graph in the pc mark 10 suite which is a longer more intense test that combines a lot of real world scenarios into one score and that is kind of meant to replicate a more active and a more heavy use of the drive the new t7 shield is a tiny bit ahead but not by that much it is not a big enough difference to really notice it in real world anyways and as you can see in the graph there are actually several other options out there that offer significantly faster performance if that is what you are after and we got a similar picture in the 3d mark gaming benchmark as well and this is a fairly new benchmark that combines loading times of several different games into one score as well as an average latency result and i haven't really had time to retest all the drives that i have but the result so far shows the same thing as before so the d7 shield isn't really any faster than the original t7 and there are faster options out there that will load your games a bit quicker than this one while sequential performance isn't that relevant when it comes to internal drives it can be pretty relevant when it comes to external ssds which are very often used to just copy data to and from now a drive with a 10 gigabit usb port will have read and write speeds roughly capped at that point and obviously 20 gigabit drives will show better performance but it is also important to remember that there are very few devices out there that actually offer a 20 gigabit port while 10 gigabit ports are actually quite common also grabbing a 10 gigabit over a 5 gigabit one makes more sense too because the price difference between the two is not that big nowadays so i would say 10 gigabit is pretty much a sweet spot a really nice thing about the t7 shield is that it can basically hold that right speed until the drive is completely full so there doesn't seem to be any thermal throttling at all or at least not in our indoor testing which is done at 23 degrees celsius many drives tend to throttle when you start riding hundreds of gigabytes without a break and then especially those super compact and light ones or some of those very fast ones so if you're using this in a scenario where you write a lot of data non-stop like for those big clunky video files the t7 shield will be a great choice so on one hand i do kind of think it's disappointing that after almost two years samsung has done very little to improve the t7 performance and for most regular workflows the performance is unchanged and there are just plenty of faster drives out there that will probably cost you less now i don't really know the exact price of this one just yet but i do expect it to be a bit more than the t7 and right now many alternatives cost less than the regular t7 but on the other hand they're also kind of putting a lot of time and effort into some parts of the drive that many many other manufacturers just ignore things like proper ip rating a hardware encryption and improved cooling to prevent that thermal throttling so this d7 shield is pretty much made for those specific cases so for anyone that really needs that extra durability or maybe for anyone that plans to use this uh as a camera recording ssd out in the field and so on and in those cases where price matters less and those extra features make sense this drive will be an excellent choice for anyone else i'm just going to go ahead and put some suggestions in the description down below based on the prices at the time of filming this video now that is all for today let me know in the comments down below if you have any questions or if there is any drives that you would like me to look at i'll do my best to read all of them thank you all for watching and see you in the next one bye guys youhi everyone ada here and today i'm going to talk about a brand new external ssd from samsung the t7 shield it is actually launching today and this time around samsung decided to fully focus on durability so this little drive is supposed to be waterproof it is supposed to be dust proof and it is even supposed to be drop proof so it should be a perfect option for anyone that takes their external ssd wherever they go or just simply use the ssd in situations where it might be damaged whatever those may be now the t7 series isn't really new it has been around for about two years now and while they are still the most sold external ssds pretty much everywhere in the world they were never the fastest drives you could buy so let's see how this one performs and if it's worth considering it all let's begin this video is brought to you by seasonic and their prime series power supplies these top quality power supplies are very efficient they're whisper quiet extremely reliable and my go-to choice for most of my test rigs and builds around here and to make the deal even sweeter seasonic wraps it all up in a cozy 12 year long warranty check them out using the links in the description below the t7 shield looks only slightly larger than the original t7 but it is a lot thicker and a lot heavier it weighs almost 100 grams while the original is at 57 and it is also on the heavy side if we compare it to a bunch of other drives i've tested so far now a big part of that extra weight are the materials that they use to make it extra durable it has a very strong robust aluminum body that is then completely covered with rubber and it has two barriers around the usb connection for added protection against water and against dust so you can actually survive drops of up to three meters of height temps from -40 to 85 degrees celsius and it has an ip65 certification for water and for dust resistance so it can actually handle a lot of extreme outdoor conditions as well as an accidental water or exactly wine spill around the house now design wise i think it is a pretty elegant looking drive even though it has that rubber layer all the labels are on the side keeping the rest of the drive nice and clean and it actually doesn't pick up fingerprints easily so it doesn't really look dirty the second you touch it like the sundisk extreme pro for example so i have the blue and the cream version right here but there is also a traditional black one available as well and in terms of capacity you can pick between one or two terabyte versions and unfortunately there is no word of the four terabyte version just yet now on the side there's a usb type-c connection and an activity led and samsung included a separate usb type-a and a type-c cable they're using a 10 gigabit usb 3.2 gen 2 connection which is fast enough for most systems but it would have been nicer if they updated to a 20 gigabit connection instead now on the box itself it says it is compatible for pcs macs and mobile devices but honestly most ssds that i've tested so far kind of work on most devices anyway so like any other option on the market this will work on a playstation xbox or on video cameras that support recording on an ssd so compatibility is not something that you should worry about when it comes to this drive but when it comes to hardware encryption a lot of manufacturers actually have decided to drop this feature completely and i kind of really like that samsung continues to offer it so with their software you can actually easily password protect and encrypt your sensitive data now keep in mind if you constantly want to lock and unlock your data on different machines all the time i do think that the t7 touch with the fingerprint sensor is just much easier and quicker to use because you don't have to use the software but of course if you choose that one then you will lose the extra durability you will get with the t7 shield but let's look at that performance i'm going to start with the pc mark 10 data drive benchmark and this is actually a very nice and a very quick test that is meant to replicate a fairly light use of your drive so those are the things like working with documents photos and applications now the first t7 wasn't really known for its amazing performance and this new t7 shield doesn't seem to perform very different from the original now to be honest any ssd is going to do these tasks just fine so if you just open documents or edit some photos you cannot really tell the difference between most of these drives in the list right here but that is also not really an excuse for samsung not to show any improvement and not to get a bit higher up in this graph in the pc mark 10 suite which is a longer more intense test that combines a lot of real world scenarios into one score and that is kind of meant to replicate a more active and a more heavy use of the drive the new t7 shield is a tiny bit ahead but not by that much it is not a big enough difference to really notice it in real world anyways and as you can see in the graph there are actually several other options out there that offer significantly faster performance if that is what you are after and we got a similar picture in the 3d mark gaming benchmark as well and this is a fairly new benchmark that combines loading times of several different games into one score as well as an average latency result and i haven't really had time to retest all the drives that i have but the result so far shows the same thing as before so the d7 shield isn't really any faster than the original t7 and there are faster options out there that will load your games a bit quicker than this one while sequential performance isn't that relevant when it comes to internal drives it can be pretty relevant when it comes to external ssds which are very often used to just copy data to and from now a drive with a 10 gigabit usb port will have read and write speeds roughly capped at that point and obviously 20 gigabit drives will show better performance but it is also important to remember that there are very few devices out there that actually offer a 20 gigabit port while 10 gigabit ports are actually quite common also grabbing a 10 gigabit over a 5 gigabit one makes more sense too because the price difference between the two is not that big nowadays so i would say 10 gigabit is pretty much a sweet spot a really nice thing about the t7 shield is that it can basically hold that right speed until the drive is completely full so there doesn't seem to be any thermal throttling at all or at least not in our indoor testing which is done at 23 degrees celsius many drives tend to throttle when you start riding hundreds of gigabytes without a break and then especially those super compact and light ones or some of those very fast ones so if you're using this in a scenario where you write a lot of data non-stop like for those big clunky video files the t7 shield will be a great choice so on one hand i do kind of think it's disappointing that after almost two years samsung has done very little to improve the t7 performance and for most regular workflows the performance is unchanged and there are just plenty of faster drives out there that will probably cost you less now i don't really know the exact price of this one just yet but i do expect it to be a bit more than the t7 and right now many alternatives cost less than the regular t7 but on the other hand they're also kind of putting a lot of time and effort into some parts of the drive that many many other manufacturers just ignore things like proper ip rating a hardware encryption and improved cooling to prevent that thermal throttling so this d7 shield is pretty much made for those specific cases so for anyone that really needs that extra durability or maybe for anyone that plans to use this uh as a camera recording ssd out in the field and so on and in those cases where price matters less and those extra features make sense this drive will be an excellent choice for anyone else i'm just going to go ahead and put some suggestions in the description down below based on the prices at the time of filming this video now that is all for today let me know in the comments down below if you have any questions or if there is any drives that you would like me to look at i'll do my best to read all of them thank you all for watching and see you in the next one bye guys you\n"