Samsung T5 EVO review: Up to 8TB of portable SSD storage

Price When Reviewed

2TB: $190 I 4TB: $350 I 8TB: $650

The Samsung T5 EVO is a ruggedized, handsome transportable SSD, however what units it other than the gang is that it’s obtainable with as much as 8TB of capability. That, of us, is lots of area.

The T5 EVO is sluggish for a contemporary exterior SSD, although it beats a 2.5-inch arduous drive for efficiency and the power to face up to abuse by a rustic mile. If you’re in search of scintillating pace, look elsewhere. If you’re about capability, look right here.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best external drives to find out about competing merchandise.

What are the T5 EVO’s options?

The T5 EVO is a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) exterior SSD that measures roughly 3.75-inches lengthy, by 0.6-inches thick, by 1.57-inches huge. That size features a 0.4-inch metallic loop at one finish that you need to use for attaching a lanyard or the like.

The drive weighs round 4 ounces and feels strong within the hand. It’s additionally coated with a sure-grip, silicon-like jacket and is shock-rated as much as 1500Gs must you lose your grip anyway.

Alas, the jacket additionally has a propensity for attracting schmutz, aka small particulate matter (see under). This image was snapped after utilizing a microfiber towel and canned air.

For aesthetic causes and to not belabor the purpose, I cleaned up this subsequent picture of the T5 EVO’s non-business finish.

Samsung was mum about the kind of controller and bridge chip used within the T5 EVO (as per regular) — nevertheless, as you would possibly suspect with a most capability of 8TB, the NAND is 176-layer QLC.

QLC stands for Quad Level Cell and may maintain 4 bits of information per cell. The purpose QLC tends to be sluggish writing is that it takes a big quantity of error checking to be sure that the right voltage stage (one among 16!) has certainly been written.

Samsung additionally supplies its Portable SSD software program (first picture under) so you’ll be able to flip the T5 EVO’s native AES-256 encryption on and off and password shield it.

The extra succesful Samsung Magician software program (second picture under) additionally shows numerous data corresponding to the quantity of information that’s been written to the drive.

Note that the quantity of information written proven under could seem excessive for a brand new drive, however we typically fill the drive at the least as soon as in our testing (the next picture was taken earlier than testing was full). Normal utilization will garner a far decrease quantity.

Samsung warranties the T5 EVO for 3 years, which is a bit parsimonious in comparison with the 5 years Crucial and others supply on their exterior drives. It’s additionally deemed restricted, which is par for the course, however the firm didn’t present any TBW score (terabytes that my be written over the lifetime of the drive) pertaining to the bounds.

The firm does state that bodily harm shouldn’t be coated. I don’t blame them. You’d should run over this factor with a tank or incinerate it to kill it.

How a lot does the T5 EVO value?

Pre-launch, Samsung quoted us an MSRP of $190 for the 2TB model, $350 for the 4TB, and $650 for the 8TB T5 EVO. By comparability, the far sooner Samsung T9 (which isn’t obtainable in an 8TB SKU) is simply $10 extra within the 2TB version and, on the time of this overview, truly $100 less at 4TB from Samsung’s personal Amazon retailer. We additionally noticed no-name 8TB SSDs for round $550.

Obviously, one thing must give price-wise if the T5 EVO is to promote on something aside from model loyalty, so preserve an eye fixed out. We anticipate the costs to drop moderately quickly.

How quick is the T5 EVO?

The T5 EVO is 5Gbps (Gen 1) USB 3.2 which means that it doesn’t matter what’s inside, it’s mainly capped at 550MBps. The solely different similar-performing drive to grace our newest check mattress is Teamgroup’s C212 thumb-sized SSD.

The C212 is definitely a 10Gbps drive that solely reached Gen 2-appropriate speeds with smaller knowledge units, not the 64GB we use with CrystalDiskMark 8.

Sequential throughput in CrystalDiskMark 8 was roughly on par for a 5Gbps USB SSD. But random write efficiency was a bit off. This could be at the least partially because of the density and quantity of NAND.

Basically, the T5 EVO is about capability moderately than stellar efficiency, as you’ll be able to see within the charts. The 10Gbps Samsung T7 Shield, and 20Gbps T9 are far, far sooner. As is the present cream of the efficiency crop: Crucial’s X10.

Of course the T5 EVO was off the final tempo with our 48GB file transfers, however any 5Gbps SSD would carry out at roughly the identical pace. We merely don’t see lots of these anymore, therefore their absence from the efficiency graphs.

Being an 8TB drive actually helped the T5 EVO because it wrote our single 450GB check file. It maintained its roughly 400MBps tempo till we threw one other 1.5TB at it. At that time, writing dropped to round 195MBps and stayed there.

Outside of an preliminary copy, few folks will write 1.5TB of information at anyone time, so take that with a grain of salt. With time to get better secondary cache, it is best to not often see the efficiency drop.

Should you purchase the T5 EVO?

If inexpensive capability from a top-name vendor is what you search, then it is best to goal the T5 EVO. It’s no barn-burner, however it’s actually quick sufficient for many duties, and there’s no arguing the quantity of digital stuff it may possibly match. The case turns into much more compelling if Samsung drops the costs to aggressive ranges, as I anticipate will occur.

How we check

External drive checks at the moment make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit working on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch checks make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which additionally runs the OS.

Each check is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency might lower because of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different elements. This may be much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with far sooner late era NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can range by capability because of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND obtainable for secondary caching. Vendors additionally sometimes swap elements. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.