A portable hard disk is all well and good, but their slow speed and vulnerability to drops makes them a liability. Small flash drives are similarly vulnerable, and have the added disadvantage of being incredibly easy to lose.

Stylish design; Great performance; Convenience of USB Type-C connection

Only USB 3.1 Gen; 1, More expensive than a normal 2.5in drive, Not waterproof or ruggedised

The Samsung Portable SSD T3 is a 1TB (roughly 1000GB) portable SSD hard-drive with high transfer speeds of up to 450MB/s when using USB 3.0, with a metal case with shock-resistant internal frame, and password protection.

Extremely compact USB3 drive; Comes with easy to use software installed; 256bit encryption; USB 2.0 and 3.0 compatibility; Fast read / write speeds with USB3; Three-year warranty

Higher capacities are quite pricey

SSDs are awesome, and so is USB-C. What could be better than a combination of the two? That's the idea behind the Samsung T3, a portable SSD that operates over the USB 3.1 standard for extremely file transfers and access times.

Bonafide SSD speeds, Super portable; plug and play, Works on PCs and Android

Expensive (£300 for 1TB; Not as fast as internal SSDs; Cable remains unsightly

The Samsung Portable SSD T3 2TB is beautifully crafted, is compatible with Android and PC and offers a large amount of storage at a pocketable size. However, it comes at a hefty price tag, read our review to see how it performs.

I have 4 of these drives in various sizes, all from Maplin's. Their performance is way better than any other external flash drive I have tried and a great compact package. So good in fact one acts as the boot drive on my 2017 27" iMac as it is performs better than the internal Fusion drive.

A superb piece of equipment. Well built in an aluminium case and the drive's cable connection has a very solid feel to it. (I'm always worried about these connections when constantly plugging/unplugging the drive.

Portable solid state drives are the new black. At least, I like to think they are. For me, Samsung's Portable SSD T1 has managed to replace both flash drives and external hard drives for me.

Really fast; Small form-factor; Better value than last year

No USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable in the box; Slightly slower and slightly bigger than last year's model; Slow drives will bottleneck the T3

For those who really need a portable drive with very fast transfer speeds PLUS easy portability and don't mind paying for those luxuries, portable SSDs are been a good option. They're still a bit rare, largely because they're not cheap.

Samsung's portable SSDs bridge the gap between a small, throwaway USB flash drive -- usually with a tiny storage capacity -- and a larger portable USB hard drive. The new T3 really is the best of both worlds, and brings the luxury of high-speed USB Type-C too, but you'll pay a hefty premium for it.

If you're after a large capacity portable drive for backing up your photos, videos, music and other precious data, the Samsung T3 is a great choice. However, a traditional hard drive is still much, much cheaper if speed isn't your main priority.