Lexar introduced the Muse Ultra-Slim Portable SSD at IFA 2026 in Berlin on September 4. The company calls it the world's thinnest portable SSD, a manufacturer claim that is difficult to independently prove across every product but is supported by unusually small physical dimensions.

The enclosure measures roughly 80 by 48mm and reaches about 3.8mm at its thickest central point. The edges taper down to approximately 1mm.

Lexar gets there with a precision-machined unibody metal enclosure, a custom ultra-thin PCB and high-density NAND stacking.

It looks less like a conventional external drive and more like a small metal card.

USB-C itself became too thick for the design

The Muse's strangest feature follows directly from its dimensions.

There is no standard USB-C socket in the drive. Lexar instead places spring-loaded pogo-pin contacts on the SSD and connects them using its bundled SnapLink Magnetic Cable.

N52-grade neodymium magnets align and hold the connector against the drive. The other end of the cable plugs into a USB-C host such as an iPhone, iPad, Mac or other compatible device.

The point of this arrangement is physical. A conventional USB-C receptacle needs room for the connector body, shielding and board clearance, placing a practical limit on how thin the drive can become.

Removing that socket solves the thickness problem while creating a dependency of its own.

Lose the SnapLink cable and a normal USB-C cable from a drawer cannot take its place.

Magnetic mounting does not make the SSD wireless

Lexar also supplies a magnetic sleeve that holds Muse against the back of compatible MagSafe iPhones.

That is useful for handheld filming because the SSD stays flat against the phone rather than swinging underneath it from a conventional cable.

MagSafe is only handling the physical attachment, however.

Data still travels through the SnapLink cable and into the iPhone's USB-C port.

The setup is tidier than many conventional phone-plus-SSD rigs, but it is not a wireless storage system.

1,050 MB/s puts Muse in familiar 10Gbps portable-SSD territory

Lexar rates sequential read speed at up to 1,050 MB/s and write speed at up to 1,000 MB/s.

Those numbers are typical of a strong 10Gbps-class portable SSD rather than a drive trying to compete with the fastest USB4 or Thunderbolt products.

The engineering priority is clearly enough sustained throughput inside a dramatically smaller enclosure.

The figures remain manufacturer maximums. Lexar notes that actual speed depends on the host device, interface and operating conditions.

Long sustained writes will be particularly interesting to test because the tiny enclosure provides very little physical area for dissipating controller and NAND heat.

4K120 ProRes explains the product better than the thinness record does

The clearest use case is external video recording from an iPhone.

Lexar says compatible models can record Apple ProRes video directly to Muse at resolutions and frame rates up to 4K 120 fps.

iPhone use requires a USB-C-equipped model from the iPhone 15 family or later, while the exact external ProRes modes depend on the specific device and recording settings.

This is where saving a few millimeters becomes genuinely useful. Once a phone is being used as a camera, a thick SSD strapped to the back or hanging below the device quickly affects grip and balance.

Muse is designed less to be remarkably small inside a bag than to almost disappear when attached to the phone.

The proprietary cable is the real cost of miniaturization

The retail price remains unknown. Lexar has not published one yet.

The practical cost of the design is already obvious.

A portable SSD with a standard USB-C port can work with any properly rated replacement cable. Muse requires SnapLink at the drive end.

That creates another dedicated accessory to carry and potentially replace through Lexar if it is lost or damaged.

The magnetic connector also introduces a different mechanical tradeoff. It can detach cleanly if the cable is pulled, which may protect the phone from a strong tug, but an accidental knock during a long recording session is another failure mode to consider.

Capacity stops at 1TB for now

Lexar has announced 512GB and 1TB versions.

That is not enormous for a product aimed partly at ProRes capture, where long high-quality recording sessions can consume hundreds of gigabytes quickly.

The limit also makes physical sense. Adding more NAND while keeping the controller, PCB, power circuitry and thermal path inside a 3.8mm enclosure becomes increasingly difficult.

No 2TB model has been announced.

The Lexar app can use Muse as an automatic phone backup

Professional video is not the only intended workload.

The Lexar app can automatically back up photos and videos from a phone to the SSD.

Muse can then be moved to a compatible iPad or Mac to transfer original files and continue an editing workflow.

Lexar is effectively positioning the same tiny drive across capture, backup and editing rather than treating it only as an external recording target.

The 3.8mm figure applies to the drive, not the complete phone rig

The headline thickness describes Muse itself.

Attaching it to a phone requires the magnetic sleeve. Transferring data also adds the SnapLink connector and cable.

The complete setup is therefore inevitably thicker than the bare drive shown on a specification sheet.

That does not make the 3.8mm measurement inaccurate. It demonstrates how shrinking one component can move some of the required physical volume into accessories around it.

Muse trades a universal port for a few very deliberate millimeters

It is easy to see a proprietary connector as a regression, and for some users it clearly will be.

Muse is also a very clean engineering tradeoff. Lexar wanted a drive thinner than a conventional integrated USB-C receptacle comfortably allows, so it removed the receptacle rather than abandoning the physical target.

The real test is whether mobile creators value those saved millimeters more than they value being able to grab any ordinary cable.

Lexar plans 512GB and 1TB versions from the fourth quarter of 2026. Regional availability may differ, and pricing has not yet been announced.