I just got my first Ledger Nano S and here are my thoughts on it.
Pros:
Well, it's a very safe way to store your coins. But I'm sure you've heard it before. What I didn't hear was the reason why. It's because in order to transfer funds you will never expose your private keys, mnemonic phrase or any kind of pin. All this is done only with the hardware buttons, so there's no way someone can keylog you or hack your computer for it.
And this is pretty much it about the pros.
But I guess the bad things are what motivate us (humans) to make things better, right?
My first complain is about the lack of a USB connector. Having something portable as a thumbdrive is one of the appeals of Nano S, but having to carry a micro USB cable along in order to use it doesn't makes sense.
Adds that to the fact that at least two Google Chrome Apps must be installed in order to use the wallet and the "portable" part of it is gone. Really? Two Chrome apps? The good part of Chrome Apps is that they are always up-to-date but since my keys, pins and phases are safe within the wallet wouldn't it be a lot easier if we could just access a website? If I suddenly need to transfer coins or even get my public key I need either my computer or to install 2 apps in someone else's computer (assuming they have Google Chrome installed already). So, not practical or portable at all.
Another complain is that it's not possible to access the private keys. Come on! One needs to be prepared for forks and without the private keys the only way to acquire fork coins is using the mnemonic phrase on another compatible wallet, exposing all my private keys, instead of just the one I need. This is a huge security flaw. If I had access to the private keys I could move my tokens to another key after the fork and use the now empty key to get the forked coins and be completely safe.
Also, it seems that even the latest version of the hardware isn't still aware that BTC and BCH keys aren't compatible anymore. I can install a BTC and a BCH wallet in it, but every time I open either of those wallets, the wallet app asks me if I meant BTC or BCH. I'm in favor of warning the users that they are different coins (specially when there are some ver-holes out there working to confuse newcomers), but if I open the BTC wallet, it should open the BTC wallet and the same goes for BCH. And the worst part is that there's an option to "don't ask again". But if you check it, it will always open the option you selected for both wallets! I mean, if I pick BTC and check "don't ask me again" it will always open my BTC wallet even if I opened the BCH one! Fail!
And last but not least, is the lack of coins support. I expected many more coins to be supported and after being on the market for that long, in my humble opinion as a developer, they should be supporting even ETH tokens by now.
Well, those are the main problems, but don't get me wrong, in my opinion, it's still the safest way to store crypto-currencies (the ones supported at least).
So come on Ledger, if you need help, I'm here for you. But I guess all this market needs is more competition.
What do you think? Do you still think it's worth it?
Do you have a Trezor? I don't, so I'd appreciate any comparison.
Trade safe!