Review | The Trezor One Wallet

TL;DR

• Ergonomic and clean design
• Supports multiple Cryptocurrencies
• Offers fantastic extra features beyond crypto storage
• Design of Online Hardware Wallet needs Improvement

A song to read to

So the time you’ve been waiting for has arrived, as promised a couple of weeks ago, I have been testing out the Trezor One Hardware Wallet. I have been using the Trezor One for a while now, trying out its different features and have finally decided on a verdict. We have tried to keep this review short and sweet; after all we all have places to go, but this has not been possible as the Trezor Model one offers so many awesome features that we had to try out!

This article will NOT go into the reasons why it is advisable to store your Cryptocurrencies on a Hardware Wallet. If you want to find out about that then check out our article on that here.

Aesthetics:

The box of the device is very elegant and feels high quality, but the unboxing experience for this one was underwhelming. The cellophane wrapping was easy to remove but opening the box was tricky for even the most patient and determined. Yes you guessed it… I had to rip into it!

The Model One comes with an introductory manual, 4 Trezor Stickers, a small keyring to attach to your Device and 2 personal recovery seed leaflets.

Pros of Aesthetics:

The Trezor One is made of plastic, supports a Micro-USB port, a small display screen and has 2 physical buttons. The device is 60mm x 30mm x 6mm and weighs 12g, which is great for carrying around as it takes up no space. The Model One is by far one of the most elegant and ergonomic Hardware Wallets in the market.

Cons of Aesthetics:

Unfortunately, though it lacks a quality feel as the plastic housing feels cheap and Micro-USB Port looks as if it is misaligned with the device housing even though this is not the case. It lacks the premium feel that comes with its premium €93.49 (including VAT) price tag.

User Friendliness:

Pros of User Friendliness:

What is truly great about this device is that it is quite intuitive to use, since it only has one port and 2 buttons. Most actions occur online but the physical input on the device offers an extra layer of security to the Hardware Wallet, not found in other devices on the market.

Cons of User Friendliness:

Even though it has a bright OLED 128x64 pixels screen, it is particularly problematic when you wish to confirm an account address or login via your pin. The writing is fairly clear but the issue is down to the size of the writing; even a person with 20/20 vision would benefit from using a magnifying glass. It just makes using the device harder to use if you have to carry a magnifying glass with you. However, one must note that the ability to confirm actions on the device itself is a security feature not offered on many other hardware wallets in the market, with many not even having a screen.

Performance:

Pros of Performance:

The Trezor One has an ARM processor able to operate at temperatures -20°C to +60°C (-4°F — +140°F) and it is a USB 2.0 device compatible with Windows, Linux and macOS (10.8 or higher).

It is a cold-storage hardware wallet that supports over 650 different coins, impressive considering most users won’t be storing coins that aren’t in the top 200 based on Marketcap.

Extra Features offered beyond cryptocurrency storage:

• Trezor Password Manager
• SSH
• U2FA (2 Factor Authentication)
• GPG.

Trezor Password Manager: A cool feature, that works in collaboration with Dropbox. The passwords are stored on Dropbox but are accessible only by connecting the Trezor device to the computer. The back draw for this is that you have to connect Trezor to your PC, enter your Dropbox account and then the Trezor Password manager (only works for google chrome). You can then select the account you wish to connect to and this is then opened in a new tab. I tested this one with a couple of my passwords, on some websites it works better than others. On Facebook unfortunately it inputs logins into the signup entry options instead of the login entry options. On the other hand, on Twitter it worked seamlessly. The practicality for me here is not there, I much rather use the apple keychain on my mac. The only place I would personally consider using this would be for very private logins such as bank accounts but I usually use my phone and not my laptop for that. However, for someone concerned with their security it is definitely something I would recommend.

U2FA — I tested this feature out by making my email require U2FA and using Trezor as the authenticator. Unfortunately, this feature is not practical as you have to connect the Trezor device at every instance to access your email. This is especially problematic if you like to access your Emails from many different devices during the day. However, for someone that does require this feature, the Trezor is amazing for this, it works as advertised.

Cons of Performance:

Even a picky user like myself found it hard to find any flaws in their performance.

The Online Trezor Wallet:

The setup Process itself was quite simple, although frustrating initially for a mac user like myself as Safari is not supported and I had to install Google Chrome. After connecting the device to your pc, you are asked to go to ‘wallet.trezor.io’ where you select the device you have the Trezor One or the Model T. The initial setup for both is the same, you have to install a Trezor Bridge software that runs in the background, in order for the Trezor device to connect with the online wallet. The setup process also involves generating a backup which is highly advisable in order to still be able to access your Cryptocurrencies if you lose or break the device. It only takes a few minutes and simply involves recording in your recovering seed leaflet the 24 words generated by the device.

Now I tested the device with Bitcoin and Ethereum. Bitcoin I stored on the Trezor online wallet and Ethereum I stored on MyEtherWallet that supports the Trezor hardware wallet. The Trezor online wallet only supports 16 Cryptocurrencies. Some are not accessible directly like Ethereum and third party applicatiosn like myetherwallet must be used instead. Each individual cryptocurrency can be protected via a passphrase, that way even if someone has your pin they still require your passphrase to access the device.

The Trezor wallet also permits up to 10 accounts per Cryptocurrency supported. This is an awesome feature for those who want to have multiple accounts, perhaps one for day trading and one for long-term storage, without the need to buy a second Trezor Hardware wallet.

Aesthetics of Online Trezor Wallet:

Pros of the Aesthetics of Online Wallet:

As the Model one boasts an OLED display on the physical device, it offers you the option to customise the home screen of the device to one of your choice, as you can see in the pictures below. This is an awesome feature not offered by most devices on the market as most don’t offer a display on the physical device.

Cons of the Aesthetics of Online Wallet:

The Online Trezor Wallet, design is plain and lacks creativity. It doesn’t feel like software made in 2018 by a company in the Blockchain space, but this we found to be an issue with most hardware wallets in the market, the focus seems to be on security at the cost of creativity.

Features of Online Trezor Wallet and Transactions:

The Trezor online wallet also supports Labelling by connecting your account to Dropbox. This is another awesome feature, as it allows you to label the different accounts and each transaction. That way if I make a transaction and send Felix 100 BTC today, a week or even a year from now I can look back and instead of just seeing a transaction number, I can see a label that I wrote say 100 BTC sent to Felix. However, one of the issues with this is that it relies on Dropbox, which is an online service, that is potentially hackable. Meaning that even though your Cryptocurrencies may not be at risk, your transaction history will be.

Secondly, the setting up of this service is very confusing! When you click to enable labelling, the Trezor Online Wallet does not make it abundantly clear what this is or how it works. As a result after connecting it to my Dropbox account, I spent 5–10 minutes on Dropbox trying to figure out what this labelling was and how it works. It was only after googling it that I realised that Dropbox only stores the labels and that the labelling is done on the actual Trezor Online Wallet.

Sign & Verify:

I tried this feature out and was able to sign and verify a message using my Trezor BTC account address. According to Trezor this feature is used for:

“Signing messages can be used to prove ownership of a specific bitcoin address.

A common situation where this might be handy is: You have your bitcoin exchange account protected with 2FA, but you lose access to your 2FA tool (mobile phone, email). To get your account unlocked, you can be asked by the exchange operator to sign some message with that bitcoin address associated with your exchange account.”

A very useful tool for someone in that sticky situation, however, I will be honest with you I don’t understand how verifying your BTC address on Trezor actually helps you verify your exchange account. I contacted Trezor support and they were very helpful by sending me the following link: https://wiki.trezor.io/User_manual:Messages, although the process is not very clear for me. If any of you how this works, please let us know in the comments below or contact us directly.

Send and Receive

The Trezor Online Wallet allows you to Send and Receive the supported 11 Cryptocurrencies and even allows you to vary the transaction fees. This is a feature not always offered by wallets and when offered, with limited variation. The Trezor Online Wallet offers High, Normal, Economy, Low and even Customisable Fee- although not recommended if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Buying, Selling and Trading

The Trezor Online Wallet not only allows you to Send and Receive Cryptocurrencies but to also purchase and sell the 11 Cryptocurrencies supported by the Trezor Online Wallet. You are able to Purchase these 11 currencies directly using Fiat with a Debit Card from ChangeNow, CoinMama, Changelly, PayBis and CoinSwitch. I used ChangeNow to purchase Bitcoin and the process including the ID verification took less than 5 minutes. You can also sell these currencies but not back into Fiat, only into one of the 11 supported Cryptocurrencies. As a service this is very useful for a beginner and it’s easy and efficient to use.

Pros of Online Trezor Wallet:

• Supports Transaction and Account Labelling
• Sign & Verify
• Easy and quick to purchase Cryptocurrencies
• Offers purchases directly from FIAT currency
• Allows for purchases in multiple coins
• Supports 5 exchanges
• Allows you to vary the cost of the transaction

Cons of Online Trezor Wallet:

• Sign & Verify- No idea how to get it to work and tutorials by Trezor don’t help either
• Does not allow for selling Cryptocurrencies back into Fiat

User Friendliness of Online Trezor Wallet:

The online wallet is pretty easy to use if all you intend to use the Trezor for is to store your cryptocurrencies securely. Making transactions such as buying, selling, sending and receiving is fairly intuitive; if you have ever made a Cryptocurrency transaction in the past you can’t mess this up.

However, if you wish to take advantage of its extra features, then it all gets a bit confusing. The labelling via Dropbox was not easy to setup and the ‘Sign to Verify’ is a mystery feature (even after reading Trezor’s blogs). As such a key area of improvement would be to offer a guide for setting up the device, that way the process is smooth throughout.

Conclusion:

The Trezor model one is one of the best designed Hardware wallets in the market, both aesthetically and in performance. The device not only supports a wide selection of cryptocurrencies (more than most competitors) but also offers additional features such as U2FA, SSH, Trezor Password Manager and GPG. It may seem expensive at first but this device is a 5 in 1, which means that you are actually getting a bargain! One key area that we feel that Trezor needs to focus on is the Aesthetics of the Online Trezor Wallet and its User friendliness. Even so, we are looking at one of the best products in the market that is worth every penny!

Overall Rating: 8.0/10

A good high rating for the leader in Hardware wallets, one of our highest ratings yet. If you are interested in buying a cold Storage Hardware Wallet, at its price range it is certainly one of the best, especially with all its great features!

CryptoAuthorityLad over and Out!