Samsung Portable SSD T5

The South Korean company Samsung is the largest manufacturer of memory products of the world. At the same time, Samsung is also one of the best-known brands on our planet. In addition to smartphones, tablets and many other products, flash memory is one of the Koreans' most important products. In this test, we'll verify, well, that Samsung Portable SSD T5 really is.

Perfect processing

The Samsung SSD T5 is by far the product with the best workmanship in our test. The external hard drive weighs 50 grams and measures 7,5 x 5,6 x 1 centimeter. This makes it the smallest and the second lightest device. The T5 therefore fits in any trouser pocket and is perfect for mobile use. And that although the T5 is made entirely of metal. The outer shell comes in an attractive blue metallic color. If you opt for a hard drive with a capacity of more than one terabyte, you will get the professional black version. When you touch the hard drive, it looks very cool and of high quality.

The device has a blue status LED and a USB-C port on the bottom. Two 47 centimeter cables are included to connect the device. Users have the choice between the normal USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-C to USB-A cable for connecting to older devices without a Type-C port.

Extremely fast

We use the free program CrystalDiskMark to test the performance of the Samsung SSD T5. As expected, the SSDs in our external hard drive comparison are clearly ahead of the HDDs in terms of performance. The Samsung Portable SSD T5 is the most powerful device. With 511,7 MB/s reading and 509,7 MB/s writing, the solid state hard drive shows its pure performance. Compared to the fastest HDD, the Toshiba Canvio Basics is a lead of almost 350 MB/s.

The Samsung device is also convincing in terms of access times. At 1,07 milliseconds, the SSD is the hard drive with the lowest access time, just ahead of the Western Digital My Passport SSD at 1,26 milliseconds. Here, too, the SSDs are clearly ahead of their mechanical counterparts. while the Transcend StoreJet 25MC with 3 milliseconds as the best mechanical hard disk is still relatively close to the flash memories, both the Toshiba and the Seagate Backup Plus Slim fell back significantly with values ​​of around 24 milliseconds.

High costs

The particularly high performance of the Samsung Portable SSD T5 naturally requires a relatively high price. With 49 cents per gigabyte for the 500 GB variant, the difference to the external HDDs becomes clear. The competition costs between 4 and 6 cents per gigabyte. So if you need a particularly high capacity, you should consider whether the high speed of the T5 is really necessary. A lot of money can be saved with mechanical devices. And also in direct comparison to WD My Passport SSD does not score particularly well for the Samsung SSD T5. At 36 cents, the US manufacturer's SSD is almost 39% cheaper.

Conclusion on the Samsung Portable SSD T5

Our test made it clear that the Samsung Portable SSD T5 is the best device in comparison. It has the best performance, the lowest access time and fits easily in any pocket. The build quality of the external SSD is fantastic, the device feels good and of high quality. The USB-C port and the supplied adapter cable ensure future security and backward compatibility at the same time. In terms of performance, the Western Digital SSD can at most keep up with the Korean model. The HDDs in the test fall far behind, but catch up again due to their price advantages. Because the Samsung SSD T5 is expensive. If you need a lot of capacity, you have two options: If the task benefits from the high speed of the flash memory, bite the bullet and either use the Samsung T5 or WD My Passport. Or if high speed is at most a nice-to-have, buy one of the cheaper external mechanical hard drives.