Forsyth Jones,
However, I'm not sure if we can compare the SD protection feature present in the Trezor T and Safe 5 to a Secure Element, as a Secure Element is typically a dedicated chip designed to store and protect sensitive information such as private keys or recovery seeds against software and hardware attacks
I am going to go out on a limb here and maybe push your thought process somewhat. I am quite technically aware and I feel that the SD protect feature is every bit as good as secure element ----- EVEN ---- if the SE performs as mfg's would like us to believe they do. I do hope the SE's in Trezor are as good as they tell us they are. I plan on getting a Safe 5 when the prices drop just a bit. So in my conclusion a thief with an SD Protected Trezor T and a SAFE 5 in his booty haul would have basically no better chance to acquire the SEED from either hardware wallet ----- IF the SE performs as indicated. SD Protect is rock solid, proven, and basic mathematics. I am honestly more confident that SD Protect will hold up than the SE because it is new and to me isn't acid tested over time yet. .02
I operate in the linux world so all these programs and advanced features like SD Protect virtually run native in linux. Simple stuff for such a big return in a small time investment.
Let me see if I kind of understand this.
A lot of these technical descriptions are a wee bit beyond my abilities, yet I thought the reason to want to use the earlier Trezor (Model T with the SD slot but with out the SE) rather than the newer Trezors with the SE is because the SE in the Trezor is not fully open source. My understanding is that Trezor said that they made their SE as open source as they were able to, yet there are still closed source elements in it.. which in some sense could almost completely negate the rest of the open sourced aspect, no? Anyhow, if SD protection is brought into the Model T through the added encryption (not saying that I understand how to do that), then there are the same (or similar) benefits of adding the extra level of security (that would be in an SE), without having the sacrifice of any closed source aspects that come through Trezor's later models using SEs.