Both are really good, the T7 with a fast USB port on the computer is faster, and it’s considerably smaller.

Also one thing that’s usually dismissed and the Tx line from Samsung have is hardware encryption. Yes, they (as in the whole industry) invariably get it wrong, but it is to the level of some subtle vulnerability published against some 5 years old models, and even for that it’s not something easy or some written software anyone can take and run. It is absolutely enough if it gets lost or stolen and (as opposed to “proper” software encryption) it has two benefits you can’t get otherwise:

• support for Android (yes, as part of the “war against Storage”^1 Android won’t mount any encrypted volume of any kind, so you need some kind of hardware encryption that just presents after unlock a regular disk to the OS), in this case with Android, Windows and MacOS apps too.
• you can’t format it by mistake if it’s locked. You can wipe out easily any “proper” (software) encrypted volumes of any kind, what’s more sometimes Windows is proposing that! The usual scenarios are when you forget the drive connected to some computer, be it one used by someone else usually who just follows the prompts to format the drive, or you forget it connected to your computer when you install some Linux or something and nuke the wrong disk.

^1 I need a better name than “war against Storage”, I know, but I still haven’t found one.

The Crucial option is good because of more upgrade ability in the future. But - here’s another idea, that’s right around $100 but will be even smaller & more portable: Drive like this one: https://a.co/d/2dnQ1w1 With an adapter like this one: https://a.co/d/eiYVTvu

That said, I think your crucial SSD+enclosure would work just fine. I’ve got one of the m.2 adapters above and it’s a handy little thing so I know that works, too.