Samsung T7 Touch

An impressive update for this SSD device

- DESIRE ATHOW

£194 FROM Samsung, samsung.co.uk FEATURES 1TB, biometric fingerprint sensor, USB-C port (USB 3.2 Gen 2), AES 256-bit hardware encryption

Samsung’s T7 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 1TB T7 Touch on test here costs £194.

The T7 Touch looks very similar to the old T5 but is a tiny bit bigger and heavier. The hardware needed for the biometric feature explains the 7g gain in weight.

Samsung has stuck with the solid aluminium unibody construction which fits snuggly in your hand. The LED square also lights up with a cool blue glow to keep you informed about what the SSD is doing. There’s a Type-C connector to which either of the two bundled cables can be connected.

Samsung has swapped the SATA-based SSD of the previous T5 for an NVMe SSD behind the USB 3.2 Gen 2 bridge to offer up to significantly better performance. It is likely that the T7 Touch uses sixth-generation 136-layer V-NAND as opposed to the T5’s 64-layer V-NAND.

Use and performance

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 Samsung Portable SSD Plus software needed to enable fingerprinting capabilities. Setting up the biometric feature is straightforward, as easy as doing it on a smartphone and so is adding password protection to the T7 Touch.