Samsung T7 Shield 4TB Black

The Samsung T7 Shield is a very fast external SSD that can take a beating. Thanks to its compact size, you can also easily take it with you. I have successfully tested the SSD on my Windows laptop and my colleague's MacBook, without pre-formatting. In addition, it is also compatible with Android. The silicon housing of the SSD does attract dust fairly quickly, so you have to wipe it occasionally.

Transfer files quickly Transferring files was very smooth and fast. On my laptop, moving 5 gigabytes of videos via USB A took just 14 seconds. Via USB C it went even faster, namely in 8 seconds. With these speeds, the T7 Shield is a lot faster than the average external SSD. The long wait for a file to be on the disk is therefore a thing of the past with this SSD from Samsung.

Compact and sturdy You can take the T7 Shield everywhere you go thanks to its compact size. The SSD also has a silicone protective layer. This layer protects it against shocks, dust and splash water. The SSD therefore has an IP value of IP65. A disadvantage of the case is that it attracts dust quite quickly, so you have to wipe it every now and then. Furthermore, the cover is not intended to be removed, so you cannot easily remove it and put it back again. Despite that, the SSD is even better protected against external influences in this way. To test the durability, I dropped the SSD from 3 meters and exposed it to splash water several times, and it still functions perfectly. Be aware that it is protected up to a maximum fall height of 3 meters. In addition to the physical protection, the SSD also has an optional password protection, with which you protect your files even better. The T7 Shield does not have a fingerprint scanner for extra locking.

Enough storage for all your files With the T7 Shield, you have enough space for all your photos, videos, and other files. I tested the 2TB version myself, which was more than enough for me. With 2 terabytes, you can store no less than 200,000 photos or 200 hours of Full HD footage. If you don't necessarily need that much space, the 1TB variant is also an option.

I actually expected a higher speed. Synthetic benchmarks (Atto or HDTune) show a maximum speed of about 400MB/s with USB3.1, but if you use the disk for backup/synchronization (=many small files) the speed drops to 30-60MB/s. An old classic hard disk, which is not connected via USB, but via eSata, achieves similar speeds. I expect that with a USB 3.2 connection the performance will be better. That is also the reason that I bought a T7 (internal with NVMe SSD) instead of T5 (SATA SSD). For now, USB 3.1 seems to be the bottleneck, in addition to the extra overhead that USB has compared to eSATA.

Very fast disk and works fine. Is easy to connect with the supplied cables (USB-C - USB-C works faster). In the beginning the speed was a bit too low (50%), but by changing the settings of the hard disk (enable optimal performance in hard disk/properties/settings) it goes to 100% speed, 1000mb/s.