Welcome to another GThentic review, today we’re taking a look at the Samsung T7 Portable SSD vs the Western Digital My Passport SSD.

0:24 Size and Build

Both drives are very small in comparison to traditional hard drives as you can see here. In terms of physical differences between the two, the WD drive is made of plastic while the Samsung drive is made of metal. The WD SSD doesn’t have a status light anywhere on it whereas the Samsung has a small blue status light that stays on when the drive is receiving power, and blinks to indicate data transfer.

The WD My Passport SSD has some stylistic elements in the case; however, I did notice that the build quality wasn’t the best. The seems were not completely flush along the edges and the drive would creak whenever I squeezed or otherwise applied any pressure to the case.

1:22 WD Problems

The problems with the drive did not stop there. I installed the software that came on the drive; however, the drive was not recognized by the it. I then unplugged the drive, removed the software, rebooted my computer, re-installed the software, and tried again with the same results. I tried a copy of the software from WD’s website, just in case the copy on the drive was corrupt; however, the results remained unchanged.

1:53 Speed Test

After my failed attempts with the included software, I abandoned it for the Mac’s Disk Utility. The drive was recognized and came formatted in ExFAT; however, I reformatted the drive in Apple File System (APFS) as I wanted to do a speed test. The drive was recognized and I ran the speed test which gave me about 900 MB/s on both read and write.

2:23 Overheating

Things were looking better for the WD SSD at this point, so I decided to copy footage from my previous Samsung T5 over to the WD drive so I could edit from it. The copy took approximately 4-5 minutes for over 200 GB of data. I did notice the drive became hot to the touch, which I don’t recall happening on my older drives, so I took my thermometer and checked the temperature which was 51.3° C (124° F).

I reconnected my previous T5 and copied the same data to it, which took slightly longer at about 6-7 minutes, but when I checked the temperature it was only about 40° C (104° F) and the drive only felt warm to the touch.

3:25 More WD Problems

My problems did not end there with the WD my Passport SSD. The drive kept randomly disconnecting and freezing. It also caused Final Cut Pro (FCP) to crash while I was editing and corrupted the FCP database. After all the frustrations I endured with this drive, for about a month, I decided to pack it up and return it as it just wasn’t reliable enough for daily usage.

3:51 Samsung T7 Overview

I then picked up a Samsung T7 Portable SSD and transferred my data to it. The transfer took just about the same time as the WD SSD at about 4-5 minutes. Similar to the T5, at the end of the copy the drive was warm to the touch and recorded a temperature of about 40° C (104° F).

4:12 Cable Differences

I noticed that the cables (USB-A and USB-C) included with the Samsung T7 were significantly longer than the single cable (and USB-A adaptor) that came with the WD SSD. This, of course, gives you more options in terms of where to place the T7 SSD when using it with a desktop or laptop.

4:31 Samsung T7 Speed Test

I did a speed test of the Samsung T7 and consistently got over 800 MB/s on both read and write speeds (sometimes close to 900 MB/s) which is twice as fast as the previous generation T5/T3 drives which averaged over 400 MB/s on read and write speeds. It’s not as fast as the WD drive; however, the WD SSD did slow down with usage and was not noticeable faster in daily usage. The Samsung T7 was able to sustain its performances for longer and resulted in overall better results than the WD drive while also remaining cooler. It doesn’t matter which SSD you choose if you’re coming from a traditional hard drive as most top out at speeds of just over 100 MB/s.

5:36 Conclusion

If you want a reliable SSD that works and last long you should get the Samsung T7 Portable SSD. The WD My Passport SSD has too many build quality issues, overheating problems, and random freezing or crashing. I can’t say what it’s like for others, so if you have used one of these WD SSDs please let me know how it has been for you in the comments section. Personally, I’ve used the Samsung T3 and T5 SSD’s and I’ve had both of those for many years (since launch). They still work reliably, they don’t overheat, and the performance is still good. I’ll therefore be keeping the Samsung T7 SSD going forward.

6:26 Outro

If there’s anything else that you’d like to know about the Samsung T7 or T5 SSDs, please let me know in the comments section below. I won’t be able to provide updates on the WD SSD as I’ve already returned it. If you like this video please go ahead and tap that like and subscribe button, share it with your friends. Thanks for watching another GThentic review. See you in the next one.