Samsung releases portable SSD with industry’s leading 8TB capacity

T5 EVO [Courtesy of Samsung Electronics]

Samsung Electronics unveiled the T5 EVO on Wednesday, marking a significant stride in portable solid-state drive (SSD) technology. This new lightweight SSD boasts an eight-fold increase in capacity since the company’s entry into the market eight years ago.

The 8 terabyte (TB) portable SSD stands as the largest in the market, enough to store 2.16 million photos with a size of 3.5 megabytes (MB) and 12 megapixels for a Samsung Galaxy product or more than 160 4K ultra high definition (UHD) movies with a size of 50 gigabytes (GB). A 130MB one-minute video with the default video shooting settings can store 58,000 photos.

The T5 EVO provides 3.8 times faster data transfer speeds compared to external hard disk drives (HDDs) and sustained read and write performance of up to 460MB per second, making it easy for users to transfer high-quality files.

It is available in three capacities—2TB, 4TB, and 8TB—to suit the needs of each using environment and comes with a USB Type-C cable to easily connect to a variety of devices, including Windows and Mac personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and game consoles.

It can also easily carry large files and high-resolution videos, photos, and games.

Additionally, it has a loop design on the top for easy attachment to bags and other belongings and a light weight of 102 grams for portability and convenience. The metal body is wrapped in rubberized material, making it durable enough to withstand drops from up to 2 meters.

The T5 EVO prioritizes safety and security by applying overheating prevention technology that keeps the maximum surface temperature of the product from exceeding 48 degrees and hardware data encryption technology.

In recent years, there has been growing need for high-capacity portable SSDs given the limit of storing high-quality video files on smartphone devices as photo and video sizes have increased with improving smartphone camera performance.

According to market research firm Gartner Inc., the consumer SSD market is expected to grow annually at 36.1 percent from 2022 to 2027 on average, and the average capacity of consumer SSD products is expected to reach 3TB per device in 2027.

SSDs account for 53.72 percent of the NAND flash market this year, and it is expected to grow to 62.96 percent by 2027.

Samsung Electronics has held the top spot in the global SSD market since 2006 with a 40.1 percent share of the total SSD market last year, according to Omdia.

“With performance, capacity and durability in the size of your palm, the T5 EVO is an excellent upgrade for customers who have been using external HDDs,” said Sohn Han-gu, vice president of the Memory Brand Product Biz Team at Samsung Electronics.