Anyone in the market for a Ledger wallet knows that it can be a risky affair ordering one from a third party reseller. There have been horror stories, which made me pretty nervous about purchasing one. I decided to read up on how to verify the authenticity of the device, and ordered it from Amazon to avoid the long backorder from the manufacturer's website.
The device arrived in shrink-wrapped packaging. There was no sketchy scratch-off card with my recovery passphrase written on it, which would have been an immediate red flag based on recent news stories involving theft from compromised Ledger wallets. The wallet itself did have a bit of "foggy" residue on the metal cover, which other reviewers have pointed out. This wiped off easily. I figure it was machine grease or some artifact of the manufacturing process. I verified that the device hadn't been pried open to tamper with the electronics inside. I also let the device generate my recovery phrase (*never* use any recovery phrase that is not generated by the device itself), then I intentionally erased the wallet and restored it using the phrase I had written down. Absolutely no issue.
The peace of mind that this wallet brings is invaluable. It's far more user friendly than using paper wallets. With all the news about Tether threatening the solvency of major cryptocurrency exchanges, there was no chance I was going to keep my funds anywhere where I did not control my private keys. I previously had funds stored in software wallets on my home PC, but the fact that it was connected to the internet at all was a liability, and managing multiple wallets (each of which, in many cases, stored a copy of the entire blockchain locally) was cumbersome and space-intensive. Not to mention the chance of hard disk failure on the 5-year-old machine.
Using the wallet is more user friendly than I expected it to be. The interfaces of the various wallets are simple and the applications themselves are less clunky than many of their software-based brethren. The Ledger supports all but one of the cryptocurrencies that I hold, and it feels great knowing that my funds are locked down offline but still easily accessible if I need to send some coins somewhere.
My only gripe is that the wallet can only hold five apps at a time. I understand that this is for security reasons (less space available on the device to store and run potentially malicious code). It's only a minor inconvenience, however, because it is quick and easy to uninstall/reinstall various apps (your funds do NOT disappear, contrary to a common misconception), and you rarely have to switch apps anyway unless you're frequently day trading.
I'd recommend the Ledger Nano S to anyone whose cryptocurrency holdings exceed 10x the value of the device. It's a worthy investment.
| Color | black |
|---|---|
| Model Name | Ledger Nano S |
| Flash Memory Type | USB |
| Standing screen display size | 50 |
