Samsung T7 Shield 2TB External SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Samsung T7 Shield 2TB3. ATTO/CrystalDiskMark/AS SSD4. Backup/Restore5. Throughput6. PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark7. Real Life File Transfers8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

The latest addition to Samsung’s long-running T* series of external SSDs is the T7 Shield. The Shield version of the T7 comes with a rubber covering for added protection. The drive uses a combination of an NVMe SSD and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) interface.

Samsung's rubber casing affords the drive an IP65 certification against water and dust as well as protecting the drive from drops of up to 3m, which is a metre further than the standard T7 can withstand. Talking of dust, the rubber may protect the drive against dust penetration but we found that it also acts as a very good dust magnet.

The official quoted transfer rates for the T7 Shield are up to 1,050MB/s for reads and up to 1,000MB/s for writes. When tested with the ATTO benchmark, the review drive fell a little short of both of these maximums with a read figure at 1,002MB/s and writes at 999MB/s. Using CrystalDiskMark 8 default tests we could confirm the official performance ratings with Sequential read/write figures of 1,094MB/s and 1,051MB/s respectively, both faster than the official figures.

Real-life file transfers saw read performance go over the 500MB/s mark on a few occasions when transferring data to a SATA drive. But the true potential of the drive was shown when transferring data to and from an NVMe SSD when we saw read transfer rates as high as 1,095MB/s. The best write performance was the 866MB/s for the 60GB iso image transfer.

If you are going to stick a fast SSD in a small package then you need to make sure that the thermals are taken care of. Samsung uses Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology, which prevents overheating by maintaining the drive’s optimal working temperature below 57°C by adjusting the drive's speed if need be.

The UK price for the 2TB version of the T7 Shield is £250.99 (inc VAT).

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Pros

• Performance.
• Physical size.
• Rubber protection.

Cons

• 4K performance is a little disappointing at low queue depths.

KitGuru says: Samsung’s T7 is a very compact, fast-performing drive and this latest Shield version brings added protection against water, dust and accidental drops.

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