I love a good portable SSD. My desk drawer is filled to the brim with various drives holding a vast assortment of files, games, and other media. But those drives are a bit old, they’re a touch slow, and they take up a lot of room. Fortunately for me, Crucial recently released its capacious new X10 Portable SSD. Not only is this thing fast, but it is the smallest SSD I have ever seen in my life.
Form Factor
The X10 is incredibly compact and lightweight. It measures 2.5 x 1.9 x 0.3” and weighs just 1.1 ounces, which seems like a mistake at first glance, but it isn’t! It is incredibly small, which is great for users on the move who need to pack as much storage as possible without compromising their physical load. The last thing any traveler needs is something bulky and heavy to weigh them down.
If you’re concerned that the smaller form factor might make it easier to lose amongst your other belongings, fret not. Crucial was smart enough to add a built-in lanyard loop right into one of the corners of the drive. This allows you to clip it onto a security device so you can find it easier.
There is a single USB-C port on the drive itself, and the package includes a short USB-C cable. It is clear that Crucial designed the X10 to be the most compact storage device they could possibly make. Just from the form factor and storage size alone, I could say that photographers and videographers alike will find a lot of utility out of this SSD. But how fast is it?
Performance
The X10 operates on the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 standard, which means in the most optimal setup you can get up to 20 Gb/s. This standard isn’t as widely adopted but it has a lot of flexibility. It is still backwards compatible with previous USB-C versions with scalable performance, but it also means it works seamlessly with Thunderbolt-equipped systems. Now, just to be clear, you won’t achieve the massive data transfer speeds that Thunderbolt technology provides, but you still get amazingly fast speeds. You can easily move a chunk of files quickly and easily.
Using Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test program, we ran the X10 through the wringer, checking out what this drive can really do under stress. It runs through Blackmagic RAW, ProRes 422 HQ, and H.265 codecs to see what types of files it works with along with how fast they will work. We tested this on a MacBook Pro with M2 chip and a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port. All numbers are operating on average testing performance. Just to note, that because there is a slight incompatibility between my computer’s version of Thunderbolt and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, it automatically adjusts my data transfer speeds down to 10 Gb/s, which is more in line with USB 3.2 Gen 2. While not optimal, it is still incredibly fast.
The results are great! While this drive seems to be well suited for photos and general data backup, we wanted to put it through a solid testing phase. If you are moving tons of photos in the range of hundreds, this drive will be fine. Video is a whole other beast. Under the Blackmagic RAW codec, it supports 1080p resolution at 25 fps all the way up to 12K DCI 60! Speed-wise we are looking at 2453 and 2310 MB/s read and write speeds for 1080p video transfer, which is well over the expected speed.
For ProRes 422 HQ workloads, we saw read and write speeds of 3820 and 3568 MB/s for NTSC/PAL.
Then we have H.265 (or HEVC). Here I found that the read speed reached a high of 11,114 MB/s and write speeds at 10346 MB/s at 1080p
Nice-to-Have Features
The X10 also includes a slew of additional features I found quite nice and important to a handful of people out there. It is compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux systems, as well as Android, iPad, as well as Xbox and PlayStation. You might need to format the drive prior to using it depending on the system. That takes just a few minutes to do and is pretty typical for all SSDs these days.
Additionally, the X10 is IP65 rated, making it both dust and water resistant, which is great for the longevity of the device. It can also withstand drops up to 9.8’ high and while I am a person who enjoys testing the fullest extent of every device, I am not willing to drop it down our stairwell. It is nice to know that if you accidentally drop it once or twice it won’t corrupt your data compared to older disc-based drives.
Conclusion
I really like the X10. I also like how it comes in multiple capacities, so you can easily scale your storage needs to your workload. If you don’t need all the space in the world, the 1TB version will be absolutely fine, while filmmakers and photographers will absolutely get more bang for the buck with the higher-capacity versions. No matter what your needs are, Crucial has you covered.
