The Crucial X10 Pro 4TB USB Type-C is a 2×2 device that is small and capable of surprising performance. When we say small, this is designed not just to be used with notebooks and desktops. Instead, it is also designed to be used with iPads, iPhones, and Android devices. For example, one can record ProRes video on an iPhone to this device for extra storage.
At around $308, the Crucial X10 Pro costs around $50 more than the Crucial X9 Pro at 4TB and around $8 more than the Samsung T9. The question is whether it is worth it to pay more for this drive. Recently, we needed to purchase a few external SSDs to transfer large amounts of footage, so we bought many SSDs to try.
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Crucial X10 Pro 4TB Hardware Overview
The drive itself is very small at 65 x 50 x 10 mm. This is considerably smaller than a drive like the Samsung T7 Shield or T9 Shield. Part of the benefit is being able to mount it to an iPhone for shooting footage.
It is also rated as drop-proof up to 2m and IP55 water and dust resistant. There is also a little eye so you can attach it by stringing through the hole.
On the bottom we get the label. Something small, but nice, is that this says 4TB. Some other SSDs make it hard to see the capacity except for fine print.
The drive has a USB 3 Type-C 2×2 port, so we should get up to 20Gbps speeds. This may seem like a small feature, but in the real-world we get better performance on the 2×2 drives.
In the box, we also got a short Type-C to Type-C cable.
Just for some sense of how much smaller this is than the Samsung T7 Shield that we normally use, here they are stacked. The Crucial is much smaller.
Next, let us get to performance.
Is the case made of metal, or plastic? Missed this detail in the review. Might be important for long constant workloads (such as 30 min long ~1GB/s raw video recording)
No guts to crack open the case and show us what is inside? I’d say that is not very thorough reporting.
Looking around for another ssd drive. The 870 evo that I have is already down to 360 mb/s read and write. So the drive is a pos already after 6 months or so. Never buying another sata ssd from samsumg. The nvme’s seem to last. These sata drives not so much.
Number 1 complaint on this drive is the performance. Why? Becuase so few people have USB 3.2 2×2 ports.
I would like to see how well this performs on a TB4 or a USB4 v1.0 port, which does support the data rates and are more ubiquitous.
Better yet test the drive on a Barlow Ridge TB5 controller.