Samsung 500GB T5 Portable Solid-State Drive (Blue)

Samsung's Portable SSD T5 drive has a speedy USB-C interface, plenty of reliable storage, and it takes up about as much room in your pocket as a short stack of credit cards.

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  Excellent performance. Includes USB 3.0 and USB-C cables. Compact. Android-, Mac-, and Windows-compatible.

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  While a comparable good per-gigabyte value, the drive itself is expensive.

Samsung's new Portable SSD T5 is the same great product released last year with a slight improvement in technology. The lower capacity models come in the Alluring Blue color that we love and are affordable for nearly everyone.

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  Attractive design, USB 3.1 Gen 2 support, USB Type-C connector, Full hardware-based encryption, Excellent price point ($199.99), Attractive design, USB 3.1 Gen 2 support, USB Type-C connector, Full hardware-based encryption

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  A little buggy at release, Small performance increase over existing products, A little buggy at release, Small performance increase over existing products, Very expensive ($799.99)

Performance Summary : The Samsung Portable SSD T5 offered strong performance throughout the vast majority of our testing. For all intents and purposes, when attached to a USB 3.1 (preferably gen 2) controller, it is as fast as a typical internal SATA SSD.

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  Streamlined, Metal Enclosure, Excellent Performance, USB Type-C / USB 3.1 Gen 2, Capacity Up To 2GB

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  Price Premium

If you can afford a pocket SSD as opposed to a pocket hard drive, and especially if your PC has a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port—it's not Samsung's fault, but we tried the T5 with a slow USB 2.0 port and the results were not pretty—we don't know of a better external storage solution.

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  Couldn't be more portable, Fast performance, Handsome design, Comes with USB-C and USB-A cables

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  Expensive, No utility software except for password lock

Final ThoughtsWhen it comes to portable solid state drives there really is not much you can change, but I think that Samsung made the right changes to for the T5 to make it current and one of the fastest portable drives you can buy.

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  – Superfast transfer speeds, – Small and very portable, – TypeC to C and TypeC to A cables included, – Software allows for password protection

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  – None that I found

Tiny and outrageously fast, the Samsung T5 Portable SSD is the ultimate portable hard drive -- albeit with a price tag to match. It's about the same size and weight as a stack of 10 credit cards, so you'll barely feel it in your pocket.

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  Tiny, Outrageously fast, Rugged aluminum body, Three-year warranty

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  Very expensive per GB

The Samsung T5 vastly improves on its predecessor as this ultra-portable SSD boasts best-of-class performance and design.

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  Great overall performance, Durable, modern and slim design, Easy-to-use software

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  No increase in maximum capacity

While testing this unit, you'd almost forget that it is a USB flash storage device :) And for USB 3.1 it is fast, but perhaps could have been faster? I mean this is USB 3.1 Gen 2, we've seen USB 3.0 and 3.1 Gen 1 at this performance level for two years now.

The T5 is an updated version of their portable line and the first to use Samsung’s 64-layer V-NAND technology. By using the most up-to-date advances in storage density and USB protocols, Samsung has produced a high speed, portable SSD that’s very compact and versatile.

I noticed the smaller transfer sizes were lacking on the ThreadRipper platform, which appears to be a processor/memory related latency issue I'll dig into the external storage performance on the newer AMD platforms soon, but that's another article :).

Large blueprints have always been a pain in my industry - not anymore! With 2TB of storage, I am not even worried this will run out of space and it's durable too - which is what I need.

This is my second Samsung portable SSD. A year and half ago I had purchased the previous version in 500G capacity. Since I am very much into photography, these drives are great for storing my digital images during trips.These portable drives use a USB type C connection on the drive.

I bought this to use as a extra space primarily for running VMware virtual machines with both Mac and PC. Works perfectly for that purpose. Comes with both USB-A and USB-C cables, works with my Thunderbolt 3 ASUS Laptop and my older USB 3 Mac Book Pro.

After a lot of googling I have now a faster MacBook Pro running on external SSD running. The biggest problem: finding the right information in the right order!Now using my Mac HD as storage.

This tiny, less than 2 ounces solid state hard drive is a perfect complement to a laptop or surface pro type computer. Quick and reliable. Can't endorse it enough.

Love the SSD drive. Great construction. Super fast. Rock Solid design. Comes with cords for C to C and C to USB

I like everything except when I have it connected and auto backup selected my computer won't start unless I disconnect the power source for 10-15 seconds then reconnect. If i turn off the auto backup in Time Machine the computer starts OK

Works right out of the box and appears to write very fast, nothing to compare it to yet except classic spin hard drives, and there's no comparison there. Using for photo manipulation and goes back and forth between computers from USB to thunderbolt.