American company Lexar has announced the Muse, a portable SSD presented as the thinnest in its category. The drive tapers from 3.8mm at its thickest point to approximately 1mm at its thinnest edge — a profile comparable to a standard credit card and narrower than the body of the iPhone Air at its slimmest point, excluding the camera bump. Overall dimensions are 80 × 48 × 3.8mm, and the construction uses a precision-machined unibody metal enclosure formed from a single piece of metal, with a custom thin PCB, precision stacking, and compressed internal housing contributing to the reduced thickness.

The physical constraints of the design preclude the use of a conventional USB-C port. Instead, the Muse uses a proprietary PogoPin magnetic interface — a spring-loaded pin connector on the rear surface of the drive — paired with a supplied SnapLink Magnetic Cable. The other end of this cable terminates in a standard USB-C connector. Data transfer speeds are rated at up to 1,050 MB/s sequential read and 1,000 MB/s sequential write through this interface — figures that are sufficient for direct external recording of Apple ProRes 4K video at up to 120fps on compatible iPhone Pro models, and adequate for most photography-oriented workflows, though considerably below the peak throughput of high-end portable SSDs using USB4.