Introduction, Specifications, and Packaging

Samsung’s new portable SSD tested!

Samsung has been in the portable SSD business for a good while now. They released their T1 back in 2015, with the T3 and T5 coming in at a yearly cadence. Keeping with tradition, today we see the release of a new model on a new interface – Samsung's new Portable SSD X5:

(970 EVO included for scale)

While the 'T' branded predecessors were USB 3.0 and 3.1 (Gen1 – limited to 5Gbps), Samsung has now jumped onto the Thunderbolt 3 bandwagon, taking a firmware-tweaked (for encryption) 970 EVO and placing it behind an Intel Alpine Ridge DSL6340 Thunderbolt 3 controller.

Specifications

Specs of note are the nearly 3GB/s sequential read speed. 2.3GB/s writes are nothing to sneeze at, either. No random performance noted here, but we will fix that with our test suite later on in the article.

Packaging

Nice packaging and presentation.

Read on for our review of the Samsung Portable SSD X5!

 

Review Terms and Disclosure
All Information as of the Date of Publication
How product was obtained: The product is on loan from Samsung for the purpose of this review.
What happens to the product after review: The product remains the property of Samsung but is on extended loan for future testing and product comparisons.
Company involvement: Samsung had no control over the content of the review and was not consulted prior to publication.
PC Perspective Compensation: Neither PC Perspective nor any of its staff were paid or compensated in any way by Samsung for this review.
Advertising Disclosure: Samsung has purchased advertising at PC Perspective during the past twelve months.
Affiliate links: This article contains affiliate links to online retailers. PC Perspective may receive compensation for purchases through those links.
Consulting Disclosure: Samsung is not a current client of Shrout Research.
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