Samsung Portable SSD T3 Review

Samsung launched the Portable SSD T3 at CES 2016. The claim to fame was the availability of 2TB of flash in a palm-sized enclosure with a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C interface. The T3 builds upon the market success of the T1 released in early 2015. The T3 units are slated to become available in the market towards the end of February, but Samsung provided the press with early samples. Due to the rising popularity of USB 3.1 Type-C direct-attached storage (DAS) devices and the upcoming Thunderbolt 3 DAS units, we also took this review process as the opportunity to upgrade our core direct-attached storage testing platform. Read on for a detailed review of the 2TB Samsung Portable SSD T3 as well as the build log for our Skylake-based DAS testbed.