In brief: Among the many things showcased at CES this year is a new portable SSD from Samsung that has an integrated fingerprint reader for added security, as well as double the read and write speeds of previous generations.
With CES in full swing, everyone is excited about the breadth of new PC form factors, smart things for the modern home, insane gaming setups, and rotating 4K TVs to name just a few of the many products and prototypes on display.
Given the abundance of devices, it’s easy to miss something like Samsung’s new T7 Touch portable SSD, which was named a CES 2020 Innovation Awards honoree. Whether or not you need the extra storage because Apple has decided to keep selling the base MacBook Pro with only a modest 128 GB internal SSD, the T7 Touch has a few things that set it apart from, say, SanDisk’s 8TB monster prototype.
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The new SSD keeps the compact form factor of its T5 predecessor with a sleek aluminium exterior and adds a built-in fingerprint reader on top of the usual password protection and AES 256-bit hardware encryption to keep your files secure. You can register up to four different fingerprints if you need to share the drive with friends or co-workers.
Unlike previous generations, the new T7 Touch has an indicator light that Samsung calls “Motion LED,” which will let you know when the drive is active. But more importantly, the company has improved the performance of the drive, with reading speeds of up to 1,050 MB per second and write speeds of up to 1,000 MB per second, which is twice as fast as the T5 – that is, if you happen to use a device with a USB 3.2 Gen 2 port.
The T7 Touch weighs only 58 grams and comes in several configurations that will start shipping later this month in over 30 countries. For those of you planning to grab one, you’ll have to spend $129.99 for the 500 GB version, while the 1 TB and 2 TB variants will cost $229.99 and $399.99 respectively.
