Samsung Portable SSD T3 500GB USB 3.1 Gen 1 Drive Review

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INTRODUCTION

Roughly a month ago WD commissioned the Edelman PR agency to conduct an consumer study with over 1000 participants (festival attendees) the subject of which was "digital storage". The result proved that the majority of people are not ready to receive large amounts of data when away from home or the office and although i wasn't really shocked to hear that still i didn't expect things to be that "bad". Luckily with USB flash drive prices taking serious hits all the time people today don't need to think twice about getting a very fast and high capacity model by one of the leading manufacturers. Of course there are always more expensive models aimed towards people who want even higher performance numbers and larger capacities and the brand new T3 Portable SSD by Samsung is one such model.



Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a global leader in technology, opening new possibilities for people everywhere. Through relentless innovation and discovery, we are transforming the worlds of televisions, smartphones, personal computers, printers, cameras, home appliances, LTE systems, medical devices, semiconductors and LED solutions. We employ 236,000 people across 79 countries with annual sales of US$187.8 billion. Samsung's Memory Business offers the industry's most advanced and extensive range of memory semiconductor products. As a leader in both the design and manufacture of memory semiconductor since 1993, the business provides key memory products including dynamic random access memory (DRAM), static random access memory (SRAM), NAND flash memory, Solid State Drives (SSD) and a range of green memory solutions for use in PC, server and mobile applications. Samsung is also leading the industry in advancements of next generation DRAM and NAND flash technologies while nurturing future memory technologies.



Just like the T1 Portable SSD released a while back the T3 is also a USB 3.1 Gen 1 model so although when Samsung announced it roughly 6 months ago i was hoping it would be their first USB 3.1 Gen 2 drive that wasn't the case. The T3 was actually released as an improved version of the T1 since it addressed several "issues" with the original such as available capacities (increased maximum capacity from 1TB in the T1 to 2TB in the T3), USB connector (from a micro-USB connector in the T1 to a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C interface in the T3), OS compatibility (Official compatibility with Android - even for volumes secured with AES-256) and finally enclosure quality and interior temperatures (Partial metal enclosure compared to the all-plastic used with the T1). Again just like the T1 the T3 is also based around an 850 EVO mSATA drive (they use the same MGX controller), uses the same ASMedia 1153E SATA to USB 3.0 bridge chip and also offers hardware 256-bit AES encryption in the form of password protection. All that's left for us to see is whether or not it's better compared to its predecessor the T1 and by how much.