At a look
Professional’s Score
Professionals
- Good efficiency
- Textured, sculpted floor supplies a very good grip
- 5-year guarantee
Cons
- Dear
- Floor tends to seize mud and detritus
Our Verdict
As soon as the worth drops a bit, this high-quality, luxurious-feeling, good-performing, exterior 20Gbps USB SSD will little question be one among our favorites.
The newest in a sequence of fantastic transportable SSDs that began round eight years in the past with the T1, Samsung’s T9 is the primary to carry SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps efficiency to the desk. For those who’re blessed with such a port (nee USB 3.2 2×2), it’s going to practically double the sustained throughput of the older T7. (Solely odd numbers are utilized in Samsung’s numbering for the sequence.)
Alas, in comparison with different 20Gbps drives, the T9 is merely a middle-of-the-pack performer. Nevertheless it additionally supplies probably the most luxe tactile expertise of the pack with its textured floor and sculpted strains.
Additional studying: See our roundup of the most effective exterior drives to find out about competing merchandise.
What are the T9’s options?
The Samsung T9 is a 20Gbps USB SSD that makes use of NVMe internals, and sports activities a USB Kind C port for connectivity. Samsung supplies each Kind-A to Kind-C and Kind-C to Kind-C cables.
The SSD measures 3.46-inches lengthy by 2.36-inches broad, and 0.55-inches thick. It weighs in at a mere 4.3 ounces. The internals are positively NVMe-based as SATA may by no means surpass 550MBps, not to mention obtain the practically 2GBps that the T9 is able to.
Samsung was mum concerning the controller and precise drive inside, but when I needed to guess, I’d go 970 Evo Plus or an replace on that given the worth and efficiency, which you’ll be able to examine beneath.
A cross-platform utility is supplied by the corporate to show password safety on and off. The utility is required to entry the drive when password safety is enabled.
Whereas not the quickest exterior USB SSD on the market, the T9 is not any slouch, and we actually like its 48GB switch instances.
As for the T9’s textured, sculpted countenance (see the lead picture), it makes the drive really feel very good and supplies a certain grip each within the hand and whereas rested on a clean floor. The down facet to the texturing, nevertheless, is that the drive collects mud, lint, and different schmutz at a close to file tempo. Tidying it up for the images was a little bit of a chore.
The T9 is warrantied for 5 years, although no TBW scores (terabytes which may be written) had been supplied. In our expertise, given affordable utilization, distributors will honor the guarantee time interval regardless.
How a lot does the T9 price?
The T9 might be out there in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities for $140, $240, and $440, respectively, on the time of this writing. These are the MSRP’s supplied by the corporate. You may even see totally different costs on-line. Be aware that some unscrupulous on-line sellers will attempt to cost significantly extra when drives are model new and in demand.
How does the T9 carry out?
The T9 is a efficiency leap past the 10Gbps T7 Contact and T7 Protect we’ve reviewed. Nevertheless it’s not near the quickest 20Gbps SSD we’ve examined. That may be the mighty Essential X10 Professional.
As you’ll be able to see beneath, the 2TB T9 we examined turned in good, if not stellar CrystalDiskMark 8 scores. Sequential efficiency was a bit up and down, however fairly good total.
The T9 was once more a blended bag with CrystalDiskMark 8 4K efficiency. It was aces on the 32-queue learn, however the single-queue learn and 32-queue write had been noticeably missing in oomph.
The place the T9 dominated over the Kingston XS2000 and Teamgroup M200 was in our 48GB transfers. Shaving nearly 100 seconds off these drives’ instances within the mixture.
The T9 took third place amongst 20Gbps drives within the 450GB write. Its time of 8 minutes and 23 seconds wasn’t nice, nevertheless it wasn’t as tragic because the Kingston XS2000’s efficiency. The T9 turned in an honest sufficient rating reflecting an total write price of round 900MBps.
Whereas not the quickest exterior USB SSD on the market, the T9 is not any slouch, and we actually like its 48GB switch instances.
Samsung touts the T9’s low energy utilization and thermal output. Whereas the drive was heat after our testing, it was on no account uncomfortable to the touch — one other plus for the silicon sleeve.
Must you purchase the Samsung T9?
We respect Samsung’s historical past of delivering quick, dependable exterior USB SSDs. We’ve come to treat these drives as one thing of a typical. Nonetheless, on the time of this writing Essential’s 4TB X10 Professional is simply $290, making the T9 appear overpriced. This will likely change quickly. Regardless, in case you go for the T9, it’s going to get the job accomplished, and in luxe style.
How we take a look at
Drive assessments at the moment make the most of Home windows 11 (22H2) 64-bit operating on an X790 (PCIe 5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Intel built-in graphics are used. The 48GB switch assessments make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Professional 2TB, which additionally comprises the working system. For exterior drives, the motherboard’s devoted Thunderbolt 4 and 20Gbps USB ports on the rear panel are used.
Every take a look at is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Be aware that as any drive fills up, efficiency will lower as a result of much less NAND for secondary caching, and different components.
The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped in addition to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can differ by capability as a result of extra or fewer chips to learn/write throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching (writing TLC/QLC as SLC). Distributors additionally often swap parts.
For those who ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report (methods being roughly equal), by all means—tell us.
