Two new portable SSDs from Crucial, a Micron brand, have been introduced with photographers and content creators in mind. Thanks to new technologies, they are incredibly small and deliver lightning-fast speeds without Thunderbolt.

“We recognize that fast, efficient workflow processes are essential to the success of videographers, photographers, and other content creators,” Jonathan Weech, senior director of product marketing for Micron’s Commercial Products Group, says. “We designed and built our two new portable SSDs, the Crucial X9 Pro and the Crucial X10 Pro, to specifically address these demanding workloads. With more photos and videos being taken than ever before, consumers are looking for ways to save, preserve and protect their digital lives reliably and quickly. These two new Crucial Pro Portable SSDs are a great choice for anyone who needs dependable, fast, high-capacity storage.”

With Micron’s TLC NAND and its single-ASIC portable storage architecture, the Crucial X9 and X10 Pro SSDs offer the industry’s highest capacity per square millimeter in a super-compact, fast drive. In a nutshell, a larger capacity drive cannot be found in a smaller form factor: In that aspect, Crucial surpasses both Samsung and SanDisk, and both drives are roughly the size of an Apple AirPods charging case. The X10 weighs 42 grams, compared to the X9’s 37 grams.

The drives have an aluminum casing, a rubberized base, a lanyard hole for mobility, and an embedded soft-glow white LED indicating the operation state. Notably, Micron decreased the number of heat-generating spots in the drive to just one. In addition to its capacity to absorb heat from reading and writing data, it should also operate cooler than other drives. Additionally, they are IP55 dust and water-resistant and 7.5-foot drop-proof. Additionally, they are protected against shock and vibration up to 1,500 G rm/s.

The X9 has a read-and-write speed of 1,050 MB/s and is the more economical of the two.

The Crucial X10 Pro SSD pushes the envelope further by offering 2,100 MB/s read and 2,000 MB/s write speeds utilizing USB 3.2 Gen 22 technology. This is the fastest external SSD speed ever made by Micron, and the X10 does so without using Thunderbolt technology.

It should be noted that USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 is only available on a few PCs and is not yet very widespread. For instance, according to Micron, only one of Apple’s laptops and none of its desktop computers presently use the technology. The maximum read and write speeds of the X10 may not be attainable on the available hardware at launch; this is more prevalent on PCs.

Both drives have a five-year warranty and are available in 1, 2, and 4TB versions.