Samsung T7 Shield
A marginal improvement over the standard Samsung T7
The Samsung T7 Shield is an external rugged SSD and is the third member of the T7 family, after the T7 and the T7 Touch launched in 2020; a long hiatus. The latter left a lasting impression on us because it brought a feature that was never available at this price point: a fingerprint reader. The T7 Shield does the opposite; it brings a fairly common feature — extra ruggedness over the standard model, that is — at a $20 hike over the T7’s reasonable price tag, and that’s about it really.
The T7 Shield is available in black, blue and beige, and in 1TB and 2TB capacities for $159.99 and $289.99 espectively; there are no 500GB or 4TB models.
The T7 Shield adopts the same form factor as its predecessors, with a full metal aluminum body (great for conductivity) and covered with rubber for toughness. Samsung’s latest external SSD has an IP65 rating for dust and water resistance, and can withstand falls of up to 9.8 feet. At 3.47 oz and measuring 3.5 inches x 2.3 inches x 0.5 inches, it is very portable, just like its forebears, and sticks to the same overall shape. There’s a USB–C (3.2 Gen2) connector on the one side, and you get a USB–C to USB-C and USB–C to USB-A cable included.
Samsung claims that the T7 Shield can reach up to 1.05GBps and 1GBps respectively on read and write speeds, which is in line with the T7 Touch. In our benchmark tests, reads ranged from 827 to 970MBps, while write speeds ranged from 812 to 944MBps. In our 10GB real life file transfer, the T7 Shield averaged 477.3MBps, which is about 20% slower than the Kingston XS2000.
THE BOTTOM LINE. A rugged portable SSD with decent performance, but it’s pricier than competitors.