The news coming out of CES 2015 is grabbing the attention of the tech media, especially when a high-profile name has new toys to share. This time it's Samsung, diving headfirst into the world of portable SSDs with its brand-new T1 drive, offering up to one terabyte of capacity and transfer speeds close to half a gigabyte per second.
Despite all the changes we've seen in recent years, the equation remains relatively intact: those who need speed should look to solid-state drives, and when density is the priority, conventional hard drives remain the responsible choice. Hybrid configurations are very common these days (the GT80 Titan is a good example), and thanks to them users can get the best of both worlds. Of course, there's also portability, and that's where the potential of an SSD grows even greater. Low power consumption, no moving parts, and formidable access times are very tempting features for any external drive you carry in your pocket. We've already seen some very robust pendrives, but SSDs should unleash all their magic, and that's exactly what Samsung aims to do with its new T1 drive.
The dimensions of this portable SSD are 71 by 53 millimeters, almost like a mobile phone. On the hardware side, the Samsung T1 borrows several ideas from the SSD 850 EVO, with some additional reductions in size and the optimizations needed to successfully implement the USB 3.0 interface. These details allow the Korean giant to announce sustained performance of up to 450 megabytes per second, a number that is “normal” for many SSDs, but impressive when it comes to external units. The business environment (and those with stricter control over their data) also have reasons to look at the Samsung T1 with good eyes, thanks to support for AES 256-bit encryption.
Samsung has confirmed that the SSD T1 will be available in 250 GB, 500 GB, and one terabyte versions, with official prices of 180, 300, and 600 dollars respectively. The prices are undoubtedly high, but Samsung compensates with a not-insignificant three-year warranty. The first Samsung T1 units will make an appearance on shelves in about two weeks (January 19-21).
