Trezor Hardware Wallet Review - Should you buy it?

Trezor Wallet is one of the most secure hardware wallets available. Developed by the Satoshi Labs, Trezor is actually made up of two different wallet models; Trezor One and Trezor Model T. The main difference between the two variations is that Trezor Model T makes use of a touchscreen for its operations whereas the Trezor One uses two physical buttons. Trezor was the first-ever Bitcoin wallet used to keep cryptocurrencies in offline storage.

Both Trezor One and Trezor Model T are provided with a display to view the status of your transactions. Since the device is powered via USB, no battery is embedded within it. Trezor One is available in two colours: White and Black. The price of Trezor One is approximately €83 whereas the Trezor Model T costs around €180. It is highly recommended to buy the device directly from the Trezor website. Based on the Cointelegraph news report, it was found that fake Trezor devices had been sold on the marketplaces such as eBay and AliExpress by untrustworthy sellers.

Just like the Ledger Nano S, Trezor is also a multicurrency hardware wallet which can be used to store Bitcoins, altcoins and the majority of ERC20 tokens. It provides additional security features like passphrases to protect the funds of its customers. By using the Trezor Manager application, the wallet can be used on android devices as well. Currently, the app cannot be used to send/receive payments but can be used to initialize or set up the device.

How does Trezor compare to other crypto wallets in the market?

Both Trezor One and Trezor Model T can be connected to a computer via USB. The operating systems compatible with the device are: Windows (7 and higher), MacOS (10.11 and higher) Linux and Android OS.

Setup & Configuration

When you receive the package from Trezor, he must ensure that the box contains the following:

• Trezor One / Trezor Model T
• USB-C Cable
• Recovery Seed Cards (2 nos)
• Stickers with Trezor Logo (4 nos)

Apart from that, you should check that the holographic seal is intact and sits tightly over the USB port of the Trezor Wallet. In addition to this, be sure to look out for the mark once the sticker is removed from the USB port. In case you find anything strange with the holographic seal you should contact Trezor’s support center right away. In such an instance, do not use your device and do not store any funds. Apart from the packaging tamper-evident hologram, Trezor also uses software to protect you from tampering.

Installation of Firmware

For security reasons, the Trezor Wallet is shipped as an empty device and it becomes the sole responsibility of the user to install the latest firmware. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Connect the Trezor Wallet to your computer using the USB-C cable.
2. Open any browser (eg. Google Chrome) on your PC and navigate here.
3. Click on the ‘I already own Trezor’ located centre-left of the screen.
4. Select the model of your device and click the ‘Continue to Wallet’ button.
5. The screen should prompt you to download and install the TREZOR Bridge software to establish communication between the computer and your device.
6. Click on the ‘Install Firmware’ button to install the latest firmware on your Trezor wallet. Once the installation is completed, disconnect and reconnect your device to apply the changes.

If your device is pre-loaded with any firmware, then you should contact the Trezor Customer Support immediately as it would most likely be a tampered device.

Before using your Trezor Wallet, you must first set the PIN code and note down the recovery seed.

1. Connect the Trezor device to your computer and open the Trezor Bridge software.
2. Click on the button marked ‘Create new’ to create a new wallet account.
3. Click on ‘Create a backup’. Now, your screen will show the recovery seed. Make a note of all the words correctly on the recovery card that came along with the device. Never store the recovery seed on your computer, mobile phone or any online storage like Dropbox, GDrive, et cetera.
4. You will be asked to select a few recovery words as part of the authentication procedure.
5. You should then set up a strong PIN to protect your Trezor device from unauthorized access. The length of the PIN can be up to a maximum of 9 digits. It is best to create a PIN of at least 4 to 6 digits in length. While creating the PIN, you must ensure that you don’t use predictable patterns, such as 1234, 5678 etc. Instead, create a strong PIN which is difficult to hack or guessed. For better security, Trezor changes the layout of the numbers every time the user tries to enter the PIN.

To easily identify the device, Trezor allows the users to create a unique name (up to 16 characters are allowed) for the device. It will be especially useful for those who have multiple Trezor devices.