LAS VEGAS—Samsung's new Portable SSD T7 Touch lets you lock and unlock all of its data with a fingerprint.
Announced at CES, the new portable storage drive has a built-in fingerprint reader similar to the ones on laptops and smartphones, but this is the first time a fingerprint scanner has been mounted to an external SSD, Samsung says.
The T7 Touch has AES 256-bit hardware encryption, which users can unlock either with a password or the swipe of a fingerprint. In addition to the fingerprint reader, the drive also features an LED status light, which lets you know at a glance if the drive is reading or writing data.
Samsung plans to ship the T7 Touch this month starting at $130 for the 500GB version; a 1TB model will cost $230 and the top-end 2TB version will be $400. All versions will be available in either black or silver. The exterior case is made of aluminum and weighs just 2 ounces.
The T7 Touch is the successor to the Portable SSD T5, which went on sale in 2017. Samsung says the T7 Touch is roughly twice as fast as its predecessor, achieving maximum rated read and write speeds of 1,000MBps. The speed boost is thanks to the use of the PCI Express NVMe storage interface.
In a sign that storage prices are continuing to fall, the T7 Touch is also much cheaper than the higher-capacity versions of the T5. The 2TB version of the T5 PCMag reviewed cost $800, twice the equivalent T7's price.
The T7 Touch's security features will likely appeal to potential buyers who transport lots of sensitive data, though Samsung's external SSDs are primarily targeted at multimedia content creators who need quick access to lots of video footage or photos.
The T7 Touch is compatible with Macs, PCs, and Android devices. It comes with a USB Type-C-to-C cable and a USB Type-C-to-A cable in the box.
Later this year, Samsung plans to offer a version of the T7 without a fingerprint reader, though pricing and capacities weren't announced.