We carried a Nano X for six weeks, paired it over Bluetooth on a phone with no cable in sight, and dug into the 2023 Ledger Recover backlash to see whether the default hardware wallet recommendation still holds up.
Six weeks, one Nano X, zero cables. That was the plan going in, and Bluetooth held up well enough that we plugged the device in only to charge it. The device we bought retails at $149 directly from Ledger, a price that puts it above several single-purpose rivals we have tested and squarely in the middle of the multi-coin hardware wallet field.
Pairing over Bluetooth changed how often we actually checked balances
A cable-tethered hardware wallet trains you to check it rarely, because plugging in a device at a cafe table is awkward. The Nano X over BLE 5.2 removed that friction entirely: pull the phone out, tap approve on the device's small screen, done. We confirmed a SOL transfer and two ERC-20 swaps this way without touching a laptop. Battery life is the tradeoff. Ledger rates it at around 5 hours of active use, and our unit needed a top-up twice during a single busy trading afternoon, so it is not a device you leave uncharged in a drawer and expect to work.
What the Secure Element actually buys you
The chip inside carries a CC EAL5+ certification, the same class Ledger has used since the original Nano S, and there is still no public case of a Ledger Secure Element being compromised remotely. Every transaction we sent required a manual confirmation on the physical screen, showing the destination address and amount before either button needed pressing, which is the entire point of a hardware wallet: malware on your phone can ask for a signature, but it cannot forge what appears on that tiny display. The device supports over 500 assets natively through the Ledger Wallet app and connects to third-party software covering more than 15,000 coins and tokens in total.
