Trezor Safe 5 Review: A Flagship Hardware Crypto Wallet With Haptic Touchscreen Smarts

Trezor is one of the more well-established names in the crypto hardware wallet space, and the latest iteration of its flagship device builds on the manufacturer’s years of experience.

The Trezor Safe 5 isn’t just trading off past glories, though, aiming to offer an experience that’s simple enough for those new to crypto self-custody with the security and features to keep more seasoned users happy.

So can this new hardware wallet secure your affections?

What is the Trezor Safe 5?

The latest Trezor Safe 5 is a hardware wallet that’s designed to be attractive, convenient to use and super secure, providing a way to physically store cryptocurrency while still being highly accessible.

The physical hardware has had a major upgrade, with lots of new and useful features, but the Trezor Suite app shouldn’t be overlooked, working in harmony with the Safe 5 to support more complex crypto management requirements.

The aim of the game is to make self-custody as seamless as using a centralized exchange to hold your crypto, lowering the risk to users.

Trezor Safe 5: Design and build

The Trezor Safe 5 is minimalist, yet functionally attractive right out of the box, thanks to a pocket-friendly form factor.

The wallet’s PC-ABS plastic frame is plenty durable, while anodized aluminum backplates in Black Graphite, Violet Ore and Green Beryl finishes and intricate laser engraving lend a premium feel and finish. More importantly, its tamper-evident casing provides reassurance that your device is secure.

Despite its small size, the Safe 5 packs in a 1.54-inch colour touchscreen. This features a 240 x 240 pixel resolution, which is plenty rich enough on such a small display. Its haptic feedback feature makes your interactions with the touchscreen reassuringly tactile, too.

The Safe 5’s Gorilla Glass 3 screen offers a layer of protection from scratches or damage you might otherwise run into when carrying this in a pocket or bag, making it practical for use on the go.

The bottom of the unit features a USB-C port so you can quickly charge it up and connect to devices to make physical transfers. Since it uses such a common port, it should mean finding a cable is easy.

The device also features a microSD card slot for even more ways to interact and make transfers or back-ups.

Trezor Safe 5: What’s in the box?

The Trezor Safe 5 eschews the sleek Apple-style boxes employed by its rival Ledger, instead arriving in eco-friendly recycled packaging.

Crack open the box and you’ll find the hardware wallet itself taking pride of place, alongside an included USB-C to USB-C cable for charging and transfers.

More importantly, the device sports a holographic seal proving that your wallet hasn’t been opened and tampered with in transit.

There are also two cards for recording your 20-word wallet seed phrase in the box, along with a start-up guide and some fun Trezor stickers.

Trezor Safe 5: Getting Started

Getting up and running is straightforward; get that holographic seal off, plug in the supplied (short) USB-C cable and connect the Trezor Safe 5 to your computer. You’re then greeted with a popup that guides you to the Trezor website, where you can download the Trezor Suite software.

Once this is set up, the device may need to update its firmware, keeping you up-to-the-minute secure. There’s then a little guidance on how to interact with the device.

You can then create your new wallet or restore an existing one using a seed phrase. Assuming you’re creating a new wallet, it defaults to the standard 20-word seed phrase. For an extra layer of security you can use Shamir backup, enabling you to generate several word lists that need to be combined for recovery.

You’ll be prompted to re-enter your 20-word seed phrase to check you’ve recorded it correctly, before your wallet is set up. You can then activate a selection of coins for use in the Trezor Suite.

Trezor Safe 5: Trezor Suite

The Trezor Suite wallet management software is available for Mac, Windows and Linux in desktop format, enabling youn to interact with your Safe 5 on a more complex level. Presuming you’re plugged into the device, using the USB-C cable, you can begin playing with the settings right from the Suite app.

Suite enables buying and selling of assets as well as sending and receiving tokens as needed, with the Safe 5 being used to sign transactions. There’s a wide selection of accounts and assets supported at time of publishing; to add one in the suite, simply select the plus icon and then pick the type of coin you want to activate.

To send cryptocurrency, you will simply need to key-in an address and select Review & Send, after which you’ll be prompted by your Trezor Safe 5 to check and confirm the transaction. Similarly, to receive crypto, you select the Show Full Address option, check the address matches the one on your Trezor wallet, then tap to confirm.

Usefully, Trezor Suite now supports in-app Ethereum staking via Everstake, though it comes with a 10% fee on rewards for using this service.

Trezor Safe 5: Features and assets

While you have the 20-word wallet backup as standard via SLIP-39, there is still the option to use a 12-word or 24-word backup, via the now more commonly adopted BIP-39 standard, if you prefer. In either case the word used is helpfully optimized for use with the Trezor keyboard and lets you upgrade to Multi-share Backup via the Trezor Suite.

The device itself is also highly compatible and plays nice with Windows, macOS and Linux systems. Asset accessibility is vast with support for over 7,000 assets at time of publishing, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano and many more.

The only catch here is that you are limited when it comes to Solana. While you can trade most tokens in the Trezor Suite, there is currently no support for SOL tokens. To access these you will need to connect to a third-party Web3 wallet like NuFi. To be clear, you can send SOL tokens to your Trezor Safe 5 for safekeeping—you just won’t be able to move them about online via the Trezor Suite software.

That touchscreen is worth a mention here as you often need to use it to key in password details. So the fact that it is super responsive and clear makes for a genuinely easy to use system. It might be on the smaller side but it does feel very much like using a smartphone touchscreen in terms of responsiveness.

Another feature that’s available, at an extra charge, is a Trezor Expert. This will cost you $99 and gets you one hour of one on one time with a professional—which is a helpful, if slightly pricey, way to ensure your hardware is setup correctly and you’re up to speed with all the features. It does demonstrate that Trezor is determined to make the process as easy as possible for everyone, even newcomers—for a price.

Trezor Safe 5: Security

Unsurprisingly, given that security is its raison d’etre, the Trezor Safe 5 doesn’t skimp on this score, packing in an EAL 6+ Secure Element that’s NDA-free. That means Trezor has signed an NDA-free agreement with the chip manufacturer, which allows them to maintain transparency and update their users on any issues that arise with the hardware.

The EAL 6+ Secure Element chip, specifically the OPTIGA Trust M (V3) model, has achieved a Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level (CC EAL) rated at 6+ certification. This is an internationally recognized standard that evaluates the security of IT products and systems in general.

These chips are typically used to protect data in passports and credit cards by preventing brute-force attacks.

For another layer of security you can also use the Safe 5’s microSD card slot. This allows you to add another entry requirement as part of the sign-in process; a PIN can be encrypted on the microSD card and having this inserted can be a requirement for unlocking the hardware.

On top of that Trezor uses open-source code, meaning anybody can verify the wallet integrity as needed. This allows crypto communities to audit and improve security measures consistently.

It is worth noting that this goes both ways, with open-source also meaning vulnerabilities can be public knowledge, creating a window where exploits are possible before they’re patched. Of course this also means that developers worldwide can offer improvements, spot vulnerabilities and suggest enhancements for what should be an overall more secure system.

Trezor Safe 5: Verdict

The latest crypto wallet from Trezor is its best offering yet, building on the secure foundations of its past models while adding an array of user-friendly features.

The Trezor Safe 5’s touchscreen and haptic feedback make it more accessible than ever, while the deep layers of security from the 20-word SLIP-39 backup to the EAL 6+ Secure Element and that microSD PIN encryption layer, all contribute to keeping your digital assets safeguarded.

Managing your crypto assets with Trezor Suite is a doddle, while its simple, streamlined integrations with the hardware wallet itself are intuitive enough for beginners to grasp.

Ultimately this is a good looking, well built, super secure and ever evolving crypto wallet that goes a long way to justifying its price. A great place to start your crypto wallet journey.