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Samsung's new Portable SSD T5 is fast and mostly affordable

Samsung's new Portable SSD T5 is fast and mostly affordable

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It's a portable SSD golden age right now. The drives themselves are getting faster and cheaper, and most new computers these days have fast USB 3.1 connections to take full advantage of the speed. Samsung's new Portable SSD T5 has speeds up to 540 MBps, and includes a USB-C to USB-C cable, in addition to a USB-C to USB-A cable for backwards compatibility. That’s speed on par with Samsung’s desktop SATA SSDs, although still a good bit slower than an M.2 drive.

If you haven't seen any of these recent portable SSDs, it should be noted that they're a lot smaller than the standard 2.5-inch portable hard drive — the T5 is about the size of a business card, and weighs 51 grams. It also has AES 256-bit hardware encryption, if you're worried about security, and comes with a three-year warranty.

Samsung will offer the drive in four sizes and two colors: 250GB and 500GB in "Alluring Blue," and 1TB and 2TB in "Deep Black." Like with any SSD, the price climbs astronomically for the higher capacities — the 2TB drive starts at $799.99. But the intro price isn't too bad: you can get the 250GB model for $129.99. For comparison, Western Digital's slightly slower 256GB model is only $99.99 but it still hasn't shipped.

Update: Western Digital’s 256GB model is available exclusively through Best Buy right now, and will be available on Western Digital’s website in a few weeks.