Samsung Portable SSD T3 Overview
Taking a first look at the Portable SSD T3 the first thing I noticed was the partial metal enclosure. The is an improvement over the SSD T1, which was all plastic. This not only adds better protection with a shock-resistant internal frame (up to 1500g) it also helps keep the drive nice and cool.
The second thing, or for many the first thing you will notice about this drive is actually how small it is! The official dimensions are 74 x 58 x 10.5 mm and it weighs in at only 51g. This means you can easily fit it in your pocket! To give you an idea of size here is the drive next to a typical 2.5-inch SSD and the WD My Passport Ultra portable hard drive.
Now we are not going to open the drive up, but we can tell you what is inside. There are two main components, first is a small mSATA solid state drive with a Samsung controller, NAND and cache chip. The second component inside is the ASMedia 1153E SATA to USB 3.0 bridge chip.
The only connection on the Portable SSD T3 is a USB Type-C connection. This of course powers the drive as well. This is also an improvement that Samsung made of the orginal SSD T1. You can also see in the below photo that the drive has rounded edges which make it easier to pick up and fit in your pocket.
