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Launched at the same time as the X9 Pro, Crucial's X10 Pro is its faster sibling using a full-speed USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 interface and is Crucial's fastest external SSD to date. Currently on sale for just under £180, it's time to put this drive through its paces and see what it brings to the table.
The X10 Pro comes in three capacities; 1TB, 2TB (the drive we are reviewing here) and a flagship 4TB model. Powered by a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller running at its full USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2 speed, 20Gbps (the X9 has it running at USB 3.2 Gen2 x 1 (10Gbps), the drive uses Micron's B47R 176-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
Crucial rate the drive as up to 2,100MB/s for reads and up to 2,000MB/s for writes. The X10 Pro comes with both 256‐bit AES hardware encryption and password protection. It has an IP55 rating for water/dust protection and can survive a drop of 2 meters, but only on a carpeted surface and let's be honest it would be a really big shock if it couldn't.
Crucial back the X10 Pro with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 2TB.
- NAND Components: Micron B47R 176-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
- NAND Controller: Silicon Motion SM2320.
- Interface: USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 (20Gbps).
- Form Factor: external.
- Dimensions: 65 x 50 x 10mm.
- Drive Weight: 38g.
The Crucial X10 Pro comes in a compact box with an image of the drive on the front which is about three-quarters the size of the actual drive. To the right of the image is a sticker that displays the drive's capacity under which are displayed the read (2,100MB/s) and write (2,000MB/s) ratings in English and French. Under the drive image are two small images stating that the drive is dust and water-resistant and an icon representing the fact the drive supports password protection.
The back of the box has some multi-lingual drive information and a list of what's in the box. At the top, there is a QR code to use if you want more information about the X10 Pro.
To say the X10 Pro is compact is an understatement. It measures just 65 x 50 x 10mm and weighs in at a mere 38g. Constructed from anodised aluminium with a rubberised base the X10 Pro differs from the X9 Pro in having a black finish. The two long sides of the drive have recesses built into them to give a better grip on the drive. One corner of the drive has a hole for a lanyard (not supplied) and this is the home for the drive activity LED instead of its normal position by the USB port.
The drive uses a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller. This controller with its single-chip USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2 solution is what's driving the growth in tiny high-performance external drives as it does away with the space requirements needed for a bridging chip. Unlike the X9 Pro where the SM2320 is running at USB 3.2 Gen2 x 1 (10Gbps), the X10 Pro has it running at full whack. Internally the 2TB drive uses two packages of Micron's own B47R 176-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
The Crucial X10 Pro uses a USB-C port, with the interface clocked at 20Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2).
All that comes in the box with the drive is a USB-C to USB-C cable (which could do with being a wee bit longer) and a Quick Start Guide.
Out of the box, the drive is factory formatted as exFAT but to run some of our tests we re-formatted it as NTFS. To test the drive at its full USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2 speed we used a Gigabyte GC-USB 3.2 GEN2X2 (rev1.1) expansion card. Many thanks to Gigabyte for supplying us with the card.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure the theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using V7.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read-and-write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
Crucial rate the X10 Pro's performance as up to 2,100MB/s for reads and up to 2,000MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO, AS SSD and CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmarks we couldn't quite hit those maximum official figures.
The best figures we saw for both reads and writes came from the CrystalDiskMark 8 test runs. The best-read figure of 2,072MB/s came when testing the drive using the Peak Performance profile (QD8 T1) while the fastest write performance (1,854MB/s) came from the default test (QD8 T1).
Crucial rates the X10 Pro at up to 2,100MB/s for Sequential reads and 2,000MB/s for writes. In our throughput tests, the drive didn't quite hit those official maximums with a peak read figure of 1,858MB/s (4MB) with writes peaking at 1,664.47MB/s (16MB). At the 2MB block mark the write performance of the drive drops sharply but it recovers quickly. Although the tested read/write figures are shy of the official ratings, the drive still offers strong performance.
In the read-throughput test, the drive peaked at the 4MB Block at 1,858.33MB/s before dropping back slightly to finish the test run at 1,839.93MB/s.
In the write throughput test, the performance of the Crucial X10 Pro climbed quite steadily up to the 2MB block, where the performance dropped off quite dramatically before recovering quickly, finishing the test run at 1,664MB/s.
The PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark has been designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices.
The Data Drive Benchmark uses 3 traces, running 3 passes with each trace.
Trace 1. Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, in to the target drive (write test).
Trace 2. Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
Trace 3. Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test)
Here we show the total bandwidth performance for each of the individual traces.
The Crucial X10 Pro does pretty well in PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark. It sits in the top 10 drives for all three parts of the benchmark run (Read-Write, Read and Write traces) with the Write test appearing to be the weakest of the three. Its overall bandwidth figure of 234MB/s is good enough to see the drive sit in third place on our results chart.
To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 2TB Seagate FireCuda 510.
Transfer Details:
Windows 10 backup – 118GB.
Data file – 100GB.
BluRay Movie – 42GB.
Windows 11 iso – 5.4GB.
File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
Steam folder – 222GB (8 games: Alien Isolation, Battlefield 4, BioShock Infinite, Crysis 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Shadow Of Mordor, Skyrim, The Witcher3 Wild Hunt).
Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
Movie folder – 12GB – 15 files – (8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
Photo Folder – 10GB – 304 files – (171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
Crucial's X10 Pro averaged 1,147.78MB/s for the 14 file transfers in write mode, the fastest being the 1,457MB/s for the Windows 11 iso transfer. When it came to reads the drive averaged 1,685.64MB/s with the fastest being the 2,072MB/s for the 5GB image transfer. The drive topped the 2GB/s mark in five out of the fourteen read transfers and passed the 1GB/s mark in another seven.
We also tested the time it took to import and export a mix of files from/to the Crucial X10 Pro into various programs.
The programmes we used were:
- Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint)
- Adobe Acrobat Reader
- Adobe Photoshop
- VideoPad
- Audacity
- The Witcher – Enhanced Edition
We also timed moving a Win 10 backup file to and from the drive and launching a game from the X10 Pro.
Crucial's X10 Pro shows strong performance for the load / save tests. It takes just 2 minutes to copy the Windows 10 backup (100GB) to the drive while exporting a 2.6GB 4K video from the app to the drive took 148 seconds. Running the The Witcher – Enhanced Edition game from the drive, it took 7 minutes to run through the opening sequences to reach the game start screen.
Crucial's X10 Pro is, at the time of writing, the company's flagship external SSD drive. The X range of external drives is made of four models; the X8, Crucial's first external SSD, designed for consumer workloads, the X6, the slowest drive in the range which offers a balance of value, capacity and performance and the two new Pro drives, and then the X9 and X10 which have been designed with content creators in mind.
The X10 Pro is the fastest Crucial external SSD to date, rated at up to 2,100MB/s and 2,000MB/s for read and writes respectively. As with the X9 the drive uses a Silicon Motion SM2320 controller but this time with the interface running at its full USB 3.2 Gen2 x 2 (20Gbps) speed. The controller looks after packages of Micron's own B47R 176-Layer 3D TLC NAND.
The combination of a controller that doesn't need a bridging chip and denser NAND means that the drive is a wee little thing. Measuring 65 x 50 x 10mm and weighing in at just 38g it's around half the size of the X8 for the same given capacity.
Built with an anodised aluminium chassis with a rubber base, Crucial states that the x10 Pro can survive a 2m drop on a carpeted floor without damaging the data stored on the SSD, which is a bit of a no-brainer, as if it couldn't it would be pretty alarming. The drive carries an IP55 rating for water and dust resistance. But a word to the wise, the IP55 rating means that although the drive has limited protection from water, it's not waterproof.
Crucial rate the drive as up to 2,100MB/s for reads and up to 2,000MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO and ASSSD benchmarks to test the drive we couldn't reach those official maximums with the best read/write scores for those two benchmarks coming from ATTO at 1,940MB/s and 1,739MB/s for reads and writes respectively.
Switching over to the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark we saw read test results much closer to the official figures with a best read result of 2,072MB/s (Peak Performance profile test, QD8 T1) while the best write result of 1,854MB/s came from the default test, again with QD8 T1 settings.
With our real-life file transfers we saw read performance go over the 2GB/s mark in five out of the fourteen tests, while another seven topped the 1GB/s mark, the fastest being the 2,076MB/s for the 5GB image transfer. Incidentally the X9 Pro produced a figure of 1,027MB/s for the same file transfer. When it came to writes, ten of the fourteen tests topped 1GB/s, the fastest being the 1,457MB/s for the Windows 11 ISO transfer. This figure is 429MB/s faster than the same transfer using the X9 Pro.
Pre-loaded on the drive are links to various useful utilities: Acronis True Image For Crucial (for backups), Mylio Photos (photo management) and although there is a link for Hedge Transfer software (file transfers), in our case, it didn't seem to be working. At the time of writing when you buy and register an X10 Pro you get a one-month complimentary Adobe® Creative Cloud All Apps plan.
We found the 2TB version of the X10 Pro for sale directly from Crucial UK for £179.99 (inc VAT) HERE.
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Pros
- Fast performance.
- Design.
Cons
- Couldn't quite hit the official maximum speeds in testing.
- Need a USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 port to get the best performance out of it.
KitGuru says: Never mind pocket-sized, Crucial's latest flagship external SSD drive is so small you might well lose it in a pocket. The X10 Pro offers plenty of capacity despite its small format and thanks to its interface, it's no slouch.
