Lexar has shown the Muse Ultra-Slim Portable SSD alongside IFA 2026 in Berlin. The body measures roughly 3.8mm at its thickest point and tapers to about 1mm at the edge, which the company describes as the world's thinnest portable SSD. It will come in 512GB and 1TB capacities starting in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Machined From a Single Block of Metal
The Muse uses a unibody enclosure carved from a solid piece of metal. Cutting down on seams and joins gives the drive a silhouette that reads as one continuous surface. Inside, an ultra-thin PCB and high-density NAND stacking fit capacity and speed into a very limited thickness.
In numbers, the thickest point is about 3.8mm and the edge comes down to roughly 1mm. Card-like is the right description, and it moves away from the "small but chunky" feel that external SSDs have carried until now. The Muse name refers to the goddess of inspiration, reflecting Lexar's aim of a tool that stays out of the way during shooting and editing.
The Cable Snaps On Magnetically
The other distinctive part of the Muse is how it connects. Lexar uses its own PogoPin magnetic data connection, with the bundled SnapLink magnetic cable making contact through a spring-loaded pin interface. Instead of plugging a connector in and out, the cable simply latches on when it gets close.
N52-grade neodymium magnets sit in both the data connection and the mounting sleeve, handling alignment and retention. Slide the Muse into the supplied magnetic sleeve and it attaches directly to the back of a MagSafe-compatible iPhone. The goal is to cut down on dangling cables when you are carrying external storage while filming.
Direct ProRes 4K Recording From an iPhone
Read speeds reach up to 1,050 MB/s and write speeds up to 1,000 MB/s. It connects to iPhone, iPad, Mac and other USB-C devices, and on compatible iPhone models it can record Apple ProRes 4K video directly at up to 120 fps.
There are conditions. Using it with an iPhone requires a USB-C model from the iPhone 15 series or later, and MagSafe attachment and direct ProRes recording support vary by handset and case. Supported formats, resolutions and frame rates also depend on the device and its settings. This is worth checking against your own model before buying.
Pricing has not been announced. Availability starts in the fourth quarter of 2026, with distribution, specifications and pricing potentially differing by region.
Gen5 Storage Aimed at AI PCs
Lexar is also showing a group of technologies it calls AI Storage Core at IFA 2026. At the center are an AI-grade Gen5 SSD and a Gen5 storage stick, with bandwidth of up to 11 GB/s. The design targets compact AI devices that run large models locally, focusing on faster model switching, lower latency and sustained performance in power- and thermally-constrained environments.
Underneath sits a Gen5 controller SPU (Storage Processing Unit) developed in-house by Longsys. It is built on a 5nm process and uses a DRAM-less design. Alongside it, a technology called Lexar Luma Bridge optimizes workload scheduling, predictive prefetch and cache management to deal with large Mixture-of-Experts models, expanding KV caches and I/O latency. Lexar says this cuts required DRAM capacity by up to 40 percent.
The booth also carried PCIe Gen3 and Gen4 client SSDs for OEM and commercial PC customers, plus a high-endurance USB flash drive series aimed at dashcam recording in electric vehicles. Lexar, founded in California in 1996, marks its 30th anniversary in 2026, and the showcase read as a memory-card company steadily moving into the plumbing of AI hardware.
Summary
The Lexar Muse is a card-like portable SSD measuring about 3.8mm at its thickest point and 1mm at the edge. A machined unibody is paired with the magnetic PogoPin connection and the SnapLink magnetic cable, and the sleeve lets the whole thing mount on the back of a MagSafe-compatible iPhone. Read speeds reach 1,050 MB/s and writes 1,000 MB/s, with direct 120 fps ProRes 4K recording on supported handsets. Capacities are 512GB and 1TB, arriving in the fourth quarter of 2026.
