SAMSUNG T7 Shield 4TB, Portable SSD

The Samsung T7 Shield promised rugged performance and portability, and for a while, it delivered. The drive itself felt solid and well-built. Initially, I was very impressed with its speed and reliability. However, this positive experience was significantly tarnished by a critical issue with the included cables. After only a handful of uses (around 15 times each for both the USB-A to C and C to C cables), the write speed plummeted to a crawl of around 1MB/s. This drastic drop rendered the drive practically unusable for anything beyond basic file transfers. I attempted all the standard troubleshooting steps: updating the firmware, running diagnostics in Samsung Magician, and trying different ports. Nothing worked. I even purchased a Crucial X9 Pro to back up my files, thinking the problem might be with my system. Formatting the T7 Shield after the backup did not resolve the speed issue. In a last-ditch effort, I tried the cable that came with the Crucial X9 Pro, and lo and behold, the T7 Shield worked perfectly! This pinpointed the problem squarely on the two cheap cables included with the Samsung drive. It's incredibly disappointing that Samsung would bundle such low-quality cables with a premium, relatively expensive product like the T7 Shield. These cables failed after minimal use, which is unacceptable. While the T7 Shield performed well initially, and its physical size is appealing, the Crucial X9 Pro ultimately outperformed it in speed tests. Considering the X9 Pro is 40% cheaper and nearly half the size, the value proposition of the T7 Shield diminishes significantly. The long-term reliability of the X9 Pro remains to be seen, but if it proves to be comparable to the T7 Shield, I see no reason to pay the extra premium for the Samsung drive, especially given the cable issues I experienced.