at a glance
expert evaluation
Strong Points
- High speed 1GBps sustained transfer
- Superior real-world performance
- 4TB large capacity
- slim and handsome
Cons
- not cheap
- Minor 4K performance glitch when writing 4K files with CrystalDiskMark 8
our verdict
When you need tons of space in your shirt pocket, the Samsung T7 Shield 4TB is hard to beat for most users. This is a very good external 10Gbps USB SSD and improved.
Price at time of review
$469
Today’s lowest price: Samsung T7 4TB
out of service
We’ve already reviewed the Samsung T7 Shield, but couldn’t help but revisit its just-announced $429 4TB capacity. It was already an excellent drive (our favorite external drive, in fact). However, I now store large data sets at home.
This new version of the already excellent Samsung T7 Shield is bigger and faster than ever. What can’t you love?
design
The Samsung T7 Shield 4TB is essentially an NVMe SSD housed inside a USB 3.2 10Gbps housing. SSDs can hold up well if the enclosure offers 20 Gbps transfer speeds, but Samsung stuck with the older and much more popular USB 3.2 implementation.
The T7 shield measures 3.5 inches long, 2.3 inches wide, and 0.5 inches thick and weighs just under 4 ounces. It’s a bit heavier than the T7 Touch, but that’s not surprising given that it’s wrapped in a silicone protective sleeve.
The new 4TB version will set you back to the aforementioned $429, but the Samsung T7 Shield is also available in 1TB and 2TB capacities for $160 and $290 respectively (although those models are selling for about 40% off at the time of writing). are available). The drive is sold in his three colors of blue or beige, in addition to the black model that Samsung sent us.
I’ve done two drop tests from about 3 feet onto a hard surface and it didn’t hurt because the drive is solid state protected. Sure, it feels good to have in hand if you find yourself in a David vs. Goliath situation.
The T7 Shield’s USB connector is Type-C and includes both a USB Type-A to Type-C cable and a Type-C to Type-C cable.
As for the IP65 rating, 6 means the shield can keep out most particulate matter, and 5 means it can be sprayed with water even if it’s not submerged. A 7 indicates that it can withstand submersion up to 3 meters. The bare Type-C port definitely has something to do with the low ratings. If you want a complete overview of the Ingress Protection assessment, this article from our sister publication TechHive covers it.
This new version of the already excellent Samsung T7 Shield is bigger and faster than ever. What can’t you love?
The T7 Shield doesn’t have the T7 Touch’s fingerprint reader, but it can be password protected using Samsung’s Portable SSD software (see below). To use this feature, the above software must be present on the computer accessing the drive. Honestly, if you want safety, choose the T7 Touch. It’s less performant, but bypassing the password entry saves a lot of time and frustration. disappointing.
performance
The sustained large file performance (over 1GBps in some cases) of the 4TB version of Samsung’s T7 Shield is no surprise. More capacity generally means more NAND for caching and better sustained throughput. Especially for large data sets, such as a single 450 GB file.
However, in the CrystalDiskMark 8, 4K Random Writes with 32 Queues and Single Thread test, the 4TB capacity had a minor flaw, scoring half as much as most other drives. This isn’t reflected in actual performance, and all other numbers are overall improvements over the 2 TB version we tested previously.
It took retesting to confirm that, but the 4TB Shield proved to be the fastest 10Gbps SSD we tested, just behind the three 20Gbps drives we tested.
The 4TB T7 Shield is also the fastest 10Gbps external SSD we’ve tested at 450GB writes, somewhat surprisingly surpassing two of the 20Gbps drives we tested. It came in second overall, behind the WD Black P50, a 20Gbps external gaming SSD.
Aside from a few glitches at 4K writes with CrystalDiskMark 8, the 4TB T7 Shield is the fastest 10Gbps external SSD we’ve tested. As mentioned above, the glitches didn’t affect the actual operation, so I didn’t care too much.
vast and very fast
The Samsung T7 Shield is a great external SSD in any capacity, but the 4TB version was a surprise. It can handle the largest end-user data sets, has great performance and a good price per terabyte. The perfect item for storing things.
External drive testing Windows 11 64 on MSI MEG X570/AMD Ryzen 3700X combo with four 16GB Kingston 2666MHz DDR4 modules, Zotac (Nvidia) GT 710 1GB x2 PCIe graphics card and ASMedia ASM3242 USB 3.2×2 It is done using bits. card. The copy test uses an ImDisk RAM disk that uses 58 GB out of a total of 64 GB of memory. Each test is run with a freshly formatted and trimmed drive for optimal results. As the drive fills up over time, performance degrades due to factors such as his NAND for caching diminishing.
Performance numbers shown apply only to drives shipped and capacity tested. SSD performance may vary by capacity due to more or less shotgun read/write chips and the amount of NAND available for secondary cache. Vendors sometimes replace components too, but I didn’t know Samsung did.
