Lexar’s Muse is an ultra-slim portable SSD that’s less than 4mm thick

Storage accessory manufacturer Lexar is preparing to launch a remarkably thin external solid-state drive called the Muse Ultra-Slim, which achieves its slender profile by using specialized high-density NAND stacking and custom internal circuitry.

Measuring under four millimeters at its thickest center point and tapering down to just one millimeter at its edges, the upcoming drive will offer capacities of either 512 gigabytes or 1 terabyte. Despite the exceptionally compact physical footprint, the drive maintains impressive performance capabilities, with data transfer rates reaching speeds fast enough to capture high-resolution video directly from compatible smartphones in real time.

To achieve this ultra-thin physical design, however, Lexar chose to omit a standard built-in USB-C port. Users must instead rely on a proprietary magnetic connection cable, which introduces a potential risk of accidental detachment and interrupted data transfers if bumped. Additionally, utilizing the drive on the back of a mobile device requires putting it inside a dedicated magnetic sleeve, an accessory that significantly increases the overall profile and largely offsets the storage device's primary selling point of extreme slimness.