TREZOR Wallet Review: A Hardware Solution for Storing Your Cryptocurrency
With the advances in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, investors are collecting and holding on to more and more coins these days. Once you amass your stockpile of bitcoin, ethereum, zcash, and so on, how do you protect them from hackers and other thieves? Right now your choices are leaving them on the exchange, a separate wallet that is most commonly installed on your phone, or a hardware wallet. Most cryptocurrency experts would agree that a hardware wallet is the most secure, and companies like TREZOR are supplying that need. Here at BCK, myself and my team members John Saeyong Ra, Charles Yu, Raphael Hannaert, Sean Yi, Tuulia Salo, and James Napier are going to talk about the TREZOR wallet and review it to see if its a viable solution for protecting your crypto assets. Head to the bottom if you would like to know how to purchase one from Bitcoin Center Korea!
TREZOR — OVERVIEW
TREZOR is a USB-connectable hardware wallet that can store, send, and receive your cryptocurrency. Right now they support Bitcoin, Ethereum (including all ERC-20 tokens), Ethereum Classic, ZCash, Litecoin, Namecoin, Dogecoin, Dash and Bitcoin Testnet.
There are a couple of other functions such as password manager and a 2-step verification feature as well. It can also connect with other popular wallets such as Copay, MyEtherWallet, and more to help secure your assets on those platforms as well.
We had each of our members try it out for a week, and here’s what they had to say.
DESIGN
Tuulia: TREZOR is a small, handy and simple hardware wallet that is easy to plug in your PC. It’s really light and it comes with a small strap that enables you to attach your TREZOR, for example, to your keychain. There are two different colors available, white and black. We had an opportunity to test the black color that is a matte-black. The packaging is trendy and it includes the device itself, a short micro-USB cable with a brief instruction paper. It’s convenient to get the cable along with the TREZOR, but sometimes it got a bit too tricky to keep it still after plugging it in because the cable was so short. It required some effort to adjust the TREZOR for keeping it still next to the laptop.
Sean: The TREZOR is a hardware wallet in the form of a USB device that is used to store your cryptocurrencies. It comes in black and white, is made of plastic, and it small and convenient to carry and use. The TREZOR comes with a small strap you can attach to the device that you can put around your wrist or finger. The TREZOR also comes with a short USB Micro-B cable that you can use to connect your TREZOR and your computer. Overall there is nothing wrong with the design and it is quite comfortable to use. It also has a cool, slick look to it as well which is a plus.
Raphael: The design is very simple, which avoids attracting too much attention (and reduces theft risks). The only drawback I found is that the screen is a bit too small and so is the text. Increasing the size would make the reading easier. However this is a peripheral problem as there is not much information to be read when using the TREZOR. On the other hand, the size allows you to transport or hide it anywhere.
USER EXPERIENCE
Charles: As mentioned on their website, I confirmed that the TREZOR supports:
- Bitcoin (BTC)
- Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
- Litecoin (LTC)
- Dash (DASH)
- Zcash (ZEC)
- Ethereum (ETH)
- Ethereum Classic (ETC)
An announcement has been made recently to support Rootstock (RSK) as well. You are able to manage each wallet (except for ETH) through the software they provide (you have a choice between a Chrome Extension or a cross-browser software package).
As for the ETH wallet, TREZOR has partnered with MyEtherWallet to manage the ETH wallets via their website and with the latest firmware update, the support for Ethereum’s ERC20 Tokens is now available.
A unique feature I noticed was the “Hide this account” function. I really don’t know how it works under the hood, but after some reading on their website one can simply hide a wallet and no one would know that that wallet exists in the TREZOR.
John: I tested out each currency and below are the results.
- BTC works great as it should be. No problemo.
- BCH work ok as expected as well.
- Dash works ok as expected as well.
- Litecoin — had a hiccup transferring from Bittrex to TREZOR. This was due to the new SegWit friendly address on TREZOR not being supported by Bittrex. The good thing is that the litecoin was never lost in the process. I simply had to generate a backwards-compatible address using the tool provided by the TREZOR. Tried again and the transaction worked. A few more steps you have to do which could be confusing for beginners.
- ETH was a pain. I didn’t like the fact that I had to leave the TREZOR extension page on my Chrome browser to go to myetherwallet. From there you have to go through 3 steps to get to your ETH wallet. To get to your receiving address, you have to go through yet another 3 steps. Confusing and inconvenient.
- ETC is even worse, since you have to do more extra steps to make sure that you are in the ETC mode on myetherwallet. So if you are doing ETH and ETC frequently, you have to go through 6–8 extra steps to access your wallet. This is not very user friendly. I wish TREZOR would simply integrate ETH/ETC wallets into the TREZOR Chome extension so that it is more seamless. The Ledger NanoS is actually more convenient for ETH/ETC based on my experience.
James: Setting up your TREZOR takes a bit of work but it’s a fairly simple and straightforward process, even if you’re inexperienced in dealing with cryptocurrencies. First when you plug in your TREZOR you’ll be directed to the TREZOR website where you’ll be asked to download a browser plugin. This is how you’ll set your pin, which comes from a randomized numerical pad in the browser. Then you’ll be given a randomly generated 24 word seed to recover your account in case anything happens to your TREZOR. The whole setup process should only take about 10 minutes and then you’ll be ready to start transferring coins to your TREZOR. Overall Satoshi Labs is trying to give an extra layer of security but still provide a simple user experience which is accessible to anyone which the TREZOR accomplishes nicely.
FEATURES
Jason: I really liked the customizable screen was really cool. It really gives it that personal touch when it turns on; its always a pleasant surprise. Also the password manager is a nice touch if you want that extra layer of security for your email, Facebook, Twitter, etc., but it might be a bit cumbersome since you would always have to connect your TREZOR to a computer to access it. The one thing that I hope that they do very soon is an integrated platform for Ethereum as soon as possible.
Raphael: There is a large set of coins that can be stored on the TREZOR and the teams seems to continuously accept new coins that become popular and which technology has been proven to be safe. The pin system and double-authentification are intuitive and constitute good security for the precious cryptocurrencies. Finally, without any doubt the password manager feature is a great plus.
Charles: Great user experience. I think it was easy to get setup, easy plug-n-play for me. I like that the TREZOR team provide a chrome extension as I don’t really like downloading a lot of software. I also like the fact that it connects with MyEtherWallet to manage ETH and my ERC20 Tokens as I find this more trustable and accessible from anywhere as long as you have internet connection. A downside I noticed is that you do need both a computer and internet connection to manage your wallets
VALUE
Tuulia: The price is reasonable for experienced traders. When it comes to the beginners in trading, the price might be a little too high if the beginners don’t invest more than $100 USD.
At the moment, there are not so many competitors in hardware wallet business so the current price of Trezor is acceptable. However, the situation might be different in the future if there will be more and more hardware wallets to choose from, especially if the hardware wallets have more unique features with a cheaper price.
We didn’t have a chance to test the product for more than a month but it seems like the product will last long and it won’t be necessary to replace it for a new one immediately. Overall, if TREZOR can give you more protection in transactions, purchasing it will be a good choice.
Sean: The price of the TREZOR wallet varies from site to site, but on average it’s about $90 USD. You can buy it for €89 on the TREZOR wallet website, which is equal to about $105 USD. The price that you can get it for on Amazon US is $86.99 which is cheaper than buying it off of the website itself. I personally don’t see any reason why you would want to pay more and buy it off of the website.
The price of the TREZOR wallet (and any hardware wallet for that matter) is not cheap, but if you’re a serious investor in cryptocurrencies and are looking for a way to keep your assets safe, then this price is not expensive at all. However, mobile wallets are also a good option for those who don’t feel comfortable about making this investment, so in the end it is all a matter of personal choice.
James: On Amazon you can get a TREZOR for $99. This puts it at the higher end of the spectrum for hardware wallets, which range from $65 to $99. This might be too large of an investment for casual cryptocurrency users who are satisfied with the safety of other wallets on different platforms. Right now the market for hardware wallets is relatively limited with three main products available, which gives the companies more pricing power. However if you are a serious user, 99$ is a reasonable price for the knowledge that your assets are as safe as possible.
CONCLUSION
We each rated the TREZOR in the four previously mentioned categories, and gave a score for each one on a 5-point scale, and then we took the average as our final score for the TREZOR:
From the scores, you can see that we thought parts of it were great, and some parts were still a work-in-progress. Will we still be using them? Most likely. Cryptocurrency is still at an extremely young age, and storing cryptocurrency is even younger, so it is a work in progress. Over time, the technology will get better and with that will come better wallets. As of right now, your choices are pretty limited. Will TREZOR keep your cryptos safe? Yes. It’ll just take a little getting used to and you might have some inconvenience with having to use different platforms working with it and you’ll always have to have your computer ready to use it.
Are you interested in buying a TREZOR? Will your in luck! We are selling TREZORs at our center! Here is the info:
- Price: 160,000₩
- Location: Bitcoin Center Korea (Pickup-only; cannot deliver)
- Method of Payment: Cash or BTC (10% off if paying with BTC)
- How to buy: Please join our #trezor channel on Slack (not a part of slack yet? Join through the link below)
