Samsung T9 Portable SSD Review: Ultimate Mobile Storage?!

The new Samsung T9 is the latest SSD to hit the market. This speedy drive promises extreme drop protection and double the speed of the T7 series. I compare the new T9 to the T7 and T7 Shield, as well as test the performance of the drive and tell you why you may not see all the benefits on your Mac.

Chapters ➡
0:00 Intro
1:00 Hands on & unboxing
1:40 Design
4:40 Speed & testing
6:32 Mac limitations
8:28 Summary and roundup

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[Run-n-Gun]

Dude, SUPER HELPFUL! upgrading from my T5. Which I use as a working drive to edit photos and video. seeing you transfer 160GB in under 3 minutes is crazy!

this has sold me on the T9 over T7...time to speed up workflow! gonna get the 2TB, used to only 1TB working drive to I can store more and ready to shoot more 4k files!

Great video, was not bored, great visuals and info. Awesome work my man! Thank you 🏴‍☠

[jimcollison]

Random benefit to that USB-A to USB-C cable that's included: it's great for connecting the iPhone 15 series phones to older cars that have CarPlay. I ran into issues with lightweight (and as it turns out, charging only) A-to-C cables, but the cable that comes with the Samsung T-series SSDs is perfect! They're nice and short, and can handle the data transfer requirements for CarPlay connections. I stick with the USB-C only cable for connecting my Samsung SSD to the Mac.

[basswars]

I just bought the 4GB T9. I absolutely love it. I've been using Samsung's SSD's since the T5, and have never had a problem. Okay, once I had to reformat and reload the firmware on my T7 Shield, but it solved the problem and is still running strong.

[Gurenn]

I am still using my Samsung T7 Touch silver and I really love it. I prefer it among all portable SSD's since it relies on fingerprint scan for security.

[dsdddsdwe]

Samsung SSD are reliable. I’ve been using them since the T1 back in 2015.

The biggest problem was the build quality, but they quickly moved to metal.

[livog]

Samsung really cheaped out on Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4. Just by using a TB4 /40Gbps M.2 enclosure with a Gen 4 SSD drive, I'm hitting 3000mb/s.

[StalwartMan]

I currently have the T7 shield 1TB model, but T9 speeds are much better. Thanks for the review.🥳👍

[RameshKumar-ngnf]

Hello Andrew, Noticed one thing watching you since long time 😊.
You look to be reduced weight and looks more trimmer now compared to before😊. Looking very good now 👌
And as always thanks for the nice review . I am using samsung T7 now 😊, T9 looks good.

[BCE-]

Thanks :) This was great useful info. Another factor here is the T9 costs about twice as much as the T7. :) I was going to sell my T7 Shield I haven't used yet in anticipation of Black Friday sales on the T9. But if 50GB and under files, which is what I'd be transferring mostly, transfer at the same rate, maybe I'll just keep my T7. Plus I really don't like the lint problem. I think the reason for that is they needed to make it porous for heat disipation.

[roarmalmin]

Why on earth don’t you just offload the video files from your external SSDs to your NAS and reuse them?

[quantx]

I get that the rubber makes the T9 more durable, but if the metal underneath dissipates heat, than where will that heat go? Seems like it would go into the rubber mostly, and rubber isn't a good conductor of heat. Is that rubber sheath removable? The cup analogy for the cache was great.

[corey]

I have the 1tb t7 shield ssd from samsung. Rock solid!

[brandonwatsonmedia]

Ok Andrew, that was a sweet transition at 1:06. 🙂

[MrAtlantis]

I am not a film creator, I am not moving folders of 100GB. At this moment the T7 is a better deal. I own the T5 (500GB) and a T7 Touch 2TB. I am quite sure you will not notice a speed difference in normal conditions. So far I can see a normal T7 has a lower price compared to the T9.

[Oleg__]

No other model interests me unless it has a fingerprint scanner, which the T7 Touch has. Therefore, there is still nothing better than the T7 Touch for me.

[u]

The TB4 ports on Mac support USB 4.0 which is even faster. It will not likely have backwards compatibility for these drives only now hitting the market. 2x2 was an interim spec bump. IMO do not buy. Wait for USB 4.0 which is already in some products unless you really need a SSD now and cannot wait

[Isaac-ghku]

Hopefully there would be other variants of the T9 like T9 Touch and T9 Shield.

[JamesWages]

Speed tests are largely meaningless until you tell us what drive format you used. Most likely you used ExFAT which is a big no-no on the Mac when it comes to getting good performance. Reformat as APFS and run the Black Magic Speed test so we can get a better feel for how fast the drive is. Thanks.

[Chimpur]

So where diid the T8 go? Did they just skip it?

[vmpgsc]

LOL - the designer that spec'd a textured black rubber overmold must live in a hermetically sealed cleanroom.