Trezor One: Hardware Wallet Review
For the first time ever this week, I finally decided that it was time for me to stop using software wallets to store my crypto and finally upgrade to a hardware wallet. I decided on the Trezor One because of it's reviews, simplicity, and price. I was able to pick mine up for just $36 shipped from Amazon. While the newer Trezor Model T has some advanced features over the Trezor One such as a touch screen, I just didn't think it was worth spending an extra $130 on... not that I had that much to spend anyways lol. There were slightly cheaper hardware wallets on Amazon, but they typically had terrible reviews and I really didn't want to deal with the hassle. Trezor is one of the most well-known brands of hardware wallets, up there with Ledger, and the Trezor One in particular was the first ever hardware wallet to come on the market back in 2014.
I got my Trezor One in the mail yesterday and I've had time to set it up, play with it a bit, and send some crypto to it.
The first thing that I noticed was just how well packed it was. The box was tough to get into, but it was made that way on purpose. The box is basically super glued together and has some very tough official Trezor holographic seals covering the top and bottom of the box that was fairly difficult to cut even when using a knife. The security of the Trezor One starts with the box that it's in as you don't want to buy one that's used under any circumstances. Doing so could potentially put your crypto at risk. Normally I recommend buying used hardware for PCs to save money, but not this time... definitely not this time.
After getting into the box, I was surprised by just how small and light the Trezor One is. It's a tiny little thing that weighs basically nothing. You could carry this in your pocket or on your keychain and you probably wouldn't even notice that it's there. It's got a super simple layout with a small black and white screen, two physical buttons, and a micro-USB port on the bottom to plug it in. That's it. It comes with a micro-USB cable, but it's stupidly short at only around six inches in length. I had to keep leaning towards my computer when setting it up, but luckily since it's a standard micro-USB cable, you can easily pick up a much longer one for convenience and I'd highly recommend it. Just today I used my six foot micro-USB cable that I use to charge my phone and the difference was night and day. No more uncomfortable leaning just to use it!
Setting it up for the first time does take a little time, but luckily the process is pretty straight forward. You'll need to plug it in and the device and website will walk you through all the steps that you'll need to take. The longest part of setting it up was writing down every one of the 24 words in the backup phrase and then having to retype those in random order according to what numbered word it shows you on the device. Trezor was kind enough to provide a couple small paperboard sheets to write down the recovery phrase. It'll be this sheet that you'll be looking at a bit during the setup process.
One thing that kind of sucked was that after setting it up, I had to completely wipe the device to install a firmware update and afterwards go through the whole recovery process which took almost as long as setting it up the first time. After initially setting it up, I was asked to set up a secure pin, but after doing a wipe to update the firmware I had to set up a new pin yet again. I just chose the same pin that I'd chosen the first time.
Setup will take some time so make sure you have the time to properly set it up before you start the process. I'd say around 20-30 minutes in total between setting it up and then basically having to restore/set it up again.
Despite being a simple device, the security is pretty good for a hardware wallet in this price range. It uses a type of random matrix for the pin which can be up to nine digits in length. Everytime you plug the device into your computer, the pin pad thats shown on the device will have it's digits swapped around randomly to prevent possible keylogging attacks. On Trezor's wallet website, you'll simply have to click on the correct boxes in the correct order that respond to the what's shown on the device. You'll be using this a lot so it's best to get used to it.
If a pin number is incorrectly entered then it'll take a few seconds before you can try again. Every incorrect attempt following the first will double that lock out time. After 16 incorrect attempts are made in a row, the device wipes itself to prevent possible theft.
Other than pin entry, you'll mostly be using the devices two physical buttons to confirm or deny outgoing transactions, new wallets, etc.
One cool little touch that they have is that you can set up a wallpaper on the device which is amusing. They have quite a few pretty good pre-made ones, but you can actually create your own and upload it on there as well.
I've been using the device and it's accompanying Trezor wallet software for a couple days now and besides the somewhat lengthy initial setup, I'm happy with it.
It's lightweight, simple, cheap, and most importantly secure. It's not the most secure hardware wallet on the market, but this is a great first hardware wallet for those who might not hold a ton of crypto but are still wanting to move away from much less secure software wallets. The most important thing is to keep your backup phrase safe and stored offline in a secure place somewhere. If someone steals your Trezor you can always buy another one and restore from your backup, but if someone has a Trezor and knows your 24 word backup phrase, you can kiss your crypto goodbye because it ain't coming back!
If you use a little crypto common sense, this can be a great first hardware wallet for you whether you only hold $20 in crypto or $20,000 :)