Samsung T7 Touch - Which cable?

[cosmo811]

Hey, so I've just ordered a Samsung T7 Touch 1TB external NVME SSD off Amazon as it's currently on sale at £3 more than the 1TB T5. That said, after looking at a number of reviews, it looks like the included cables are fairly cheap plastic and I've had issues with them in the past. To that end, I was looking into buying a separate, higher-quality braided cable to make sure it lasts a long time. This is also for use with my 2019 13" 2-TB3 MacBook Pro if that helps.

The problem is that the labelling for the USB standards and speeds are so damn confusing! I can't tell what I need! This is the SSD I bought: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B082VVMNK2/

Is there any chance someone might be able to help me what braided cable would work well without throttling the speeds the external SSD is capable of?

Thank you!

 

[MacGizmo]

Any USB 3.1 Type C cable will do the trick — I recommend Anker.

 

[Boyd01]

I have had two 2tb T7's for over 6 months. Using the included USB-C cables with no problems. I would not describe them as "cheap plastic" at all, they are rather heavy and the jacket feels more like flexible rubber than plastic. Why not just wait until your SSD arrives and see what you think before wasting money on third party cables?

Now, mine are the regular T7 drives, not the "touch", in case that matters. I also have three of the older Samsung T3's and have always used the included USB-A cables for those. One of them was the boot drive for my 2012 quad-core Mini for about three years. No problems there either.

 

[ght56]

This situation is a total and complete mess. Here is my understanding...someone else can chime in to build upon or correct me as you practically need an advanced degree in USB these days to understand what the hell is going on.

To get the 10 Gbps in your situation, you need one that is a USB-C-->USB-C cable supporting the USB 3.2 Gen 2 protocol, formerly known as USB 3.1 Gen 2, also informally known as USB SuperSpeed+ and also sometimes called USB 10 Gbps. In terms of availability, there are tons of braided cables but not many that are certified. I tend to prefer certified because we've seen seedy cables do a helluva lot of damage to devices and I stick to a few makers that tend to certify their products consistently. Here is an Anker product, for example, which will support 10 Gbps transfer speeds, and is certified. It also happens to support 100 watt charging so you could also use it as a charge cable. It is a very robust cable and it is thick, but not braided.

Amazon Basics has a lot of high-quality and certified USB-C cables...this braided USB-C cable is built to USB 3.2 gen 2 spec, braided, but not certified. I would imagine it is a very good cable though. Unlike the Anker, it is not something you would want to use to charge a MBP, but it would work fine to power a hard drive.

Finally, passive USB-C-compatible Thunderbolt 3 cables will work as well, although you may have inconsistent results with achieving the 10 Gbps on longer passive TB3 cables (the USB 3.2 gen 2 spec technically maxes at 3.3 feet). I am using this 6.6 foot Thunderbolt 3 cable to power a 4K display--users seem to get consistent 10 Gbps from both the 6 and 3 foot versions and I have gotten 10 Gbps from it. (You can NOT use an active TB3 cable though.)