Samsung's releases high-speed T7 SSD to the market

Samsung has announced a new external USB-C solid-state hard drive which features significant improvements to its read and write speeds.

The business-card-sized T7 SSD can hold up to 500GB, 1TB, or 2TB of data, priced at $110 (£90), $200 (£163), and $370 (£303) respectively, although UK prices have yet to be released.

This SSD is not to be confused with the T7 Touch, released in January, which is based on the slower USB 3.2 standard.

Produced with a durable titanium metal case, the T7 is also shock-resistant and able to withstand falls of up to two metres. Users can choose from three colours, as models come in red, grey, and blue.

However, the most exciting feature of the new T7 is that it is capable of achieving a read speed of 1050MB/s and a write speed of 1000MB/s, making it almost twice as fast as its predecessor, the T5, which has a transfer speed of up to 540 MB/s.

According to Samsung, the T7 SSD can transfer a 10GB 4K UHD video in just over eight seconds, and 200 10MB pictures in just over two seconds.

This T7 USB C model, and its USB 3.2 variant, were both revealed at this year's CES, with the T7 Touch launching first with a fingerprint-enabled lock.

However, the T7 Touch comes at a heftier price tag ranging from $130 (£106) to $400 (£327). By losing the fingerprint-enabled lock but keeping the high read and write speeds, the affordability of the new T7 could appeal to a much wider audience. Moreover, users will not have to worry about compromised security, as the drive comes with optional password protection using AES 256-bit hardware encryption.

The Samsung T7 is available for purchase now, although it has since sold out on Amazon.

The news comes following the announcement that Samsung has rolled out its May 2020 security patch. The patch is meant to fix a "critical" remote code execution bug impacting Samsung mobile devices sold since 2014.