Our editors hand-pick related products using a variety of criteria: direct competitors targeting the same market segment, or devices that are similar in size, performance, or feature sets.
Although we could hit the advertised maximum Sequential speeds with our testing, Crucial's X9 Pro is still a quick, very compact external SSD with the added bonus of hardware encryption and password protection.
The Crucial X9 Pro is a tiny, near-perfect external SSD with a sturdy, ruggedized frame, hardware-based encryption, a long warranty, and up to 4TB of capacity.
If you are looking for a very fast, compact, and durable external drive, the Crucial X9 Pro and Crucial X10 Pro are excellent choices. They are attractively priced, and I found no faults with their design or use.
Micron's latest Crucial X9 Pro is an easy recommendation. It has everything you'd want from a portable SSD, including fast performance, a compact and rugged design, built-in encryption, and lots of storage space. Additionally, its pricing is reasonable.
For US customers, the aggressive pricing of the X9 Pro and its extra features make it a no-brainer. But for those in the EU or the UK, the older X8 and X6 remain a much better deal if you don’t need encryption. Those that are looking for something quicker should consider the X10 Pro instead.
Both the Crucial X9 Pro and the X10 Pro share the same housing and shape except for their colors so it isn’t a surprise that I have a lot of the same aesthetic-focused things on both pros and cons lists. The new design that Crucial came up with is surprisingly compact, especially compared to their X8.
The Crucial X9 Pro has class-leading performance specifications, and the claimed numbers are backed up by our evaluation. There are certain scenarios where true top-tier SSD performance (such as high IOPS for random access scenarios) may be needed across a wide variety of use-cases. For such requirements, bridge-based PSSDs with a DRAM-equipped internal drive can perform better even within the 1 GBps-class interface limitations.
However, for the vast majority of direct-attached storage use-cases, the performance profile, physical footprint, industrial design, and pricing of the Crucial X9 Pro represents an optimal combination.