Samsung T5 500GB Portable Solid State Drive

Model: Samsung T5 500GB Portable Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: Samsung Electronics
Provided By: Samsung America

Samsung Electronics has been a leader in the electronics industry for more than 30 years. Since the introduction of their first television in 1970, this Korean company has grown to become one of the world's leading electronics manufacturers, offering everything from tiny semiconductors to large home appliances. Samsung is no stranger to the storage industry either. Along with an assortment of DVD and Blu-ray Disc drives, the company offers both hard drive and flash based storage solutions for the portable and desktop computer markets.

This past fall, Samsung launched its latest portable solid state drive, the T5. Designed especially for content creators, business and IT professionals as well as mainstream consumers, this pocket-sized SSD is lightweight, yet durable. Thanks to a sturdy metal body and shock-resistant internal frame, the drive can withstand accidental drops of up to 2 meters. On the inside, the T5 is powered by Samsung's MGX controller and is available with up to 2TB of their 64-layer V-NAND flash. It is also equipped with a USB 3.1 Gen 2 interface which lets users transfer a 4.8GB 4K UHD movie in as little as 12 seconds. To top it all off, the T5 offers password protection of data with AES 256-bit hardware encryption.

The T5 is available in 250, 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities. For this review, Samsung sent us the 500GB version of the drive which is capable of delivering up to 540 MB/s sequential read and 515 MB/s sequential write speeds.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the T5 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at Samsung's latest portable SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the T5 have what it takes? Can it deliver the performance and features that we've come to expect from Samsung? Keep reading as we find out.