Samsung’s T7 Shield is a more durable version of its portable USB-C SSD

Samsung has announced the portable USB-C SSD T7 Shield, which by all accounts has the same internal hardware as the T7 but with a more robust design that endows it with IP65 water and dust resistance. The grippy rubber coating inherently deflects scuffs and scrapes better than the T7’s metal design and offers better drop resistance of up to 12 feet. And thanks to this rubber, according to Samsung, Samsung can maintain high performance and transfer up to 2 TB of data without it tripping Dynamic Thermal Guard function which throttles the data transfer speed to protect the hardware.

The T7 Shield is available today in 1TB and 2TB configurations priced at $143.99 and $260.99, respectively. It has the same transfer speeds as the T7 and T7 Touch (I reviewed the latter here) and delivers sequential read speeds of up to 1,050 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 1,000 MB/s.

Image: Samsung

The T7 Shield is available in black, beige or blue color options and each includes a USB-C to USB-C cable and a USB-C to USB-A cable. It is compatible with Windows PC and macOS, as well as Android phones, game consoles and more.

Samsung sent a pre-production sample for The edge to test, and its performance is just as fast as the T7, although its USB-C cable showed a tendency to wiggle out of the port with little provocation, which was worrying. Samsung spokeswoman Courtney Camp announced The edge in a phone conversation that this issue is limited to pre-production samples and does not indicate a similar issue appearing in the retail version.

As with previous Samsung USB-C SSDs, prices will likely come down soon enough. But if you don’t care about the gum, you can use the standard T7 in the 1TB ($114.99) configuration for far less than this new version costs at launch. Otherwise, the 2 TB T7 is currently being sold $229.99and I think the IP65 protection is worth $30 more.