Lexar’s Muse is a 3.8mm SSD that clips to the back of your iPhone

Lexar has used its 30th anniversary to unveil what it claims is the world’s thinnest portable SSD. The Muse measures 3.8mm at its thickest point and tapers to 1mm at the edge — closer to a credit card than a drive — and it magnetically attaches to the back of an iPhone. Details are on Lexar’s site.

Built for filming on a phone

The Muse is aimed squarely at one workflow: shooting video on an iPhone. Anyone who has tried recording ProRes knows the storage problem — the files are enormous, internal capacity disappears in minutes, and the conventional answer is a chunky SSD dangling off a cable while you try to hold the phone steady.

Lexar’s approach is to make the drive part of the phone. A magnetic carry sleeve holds the SSD and attaches it to the back of a MagSafe iPhone, while a proprietary PogoPin magnetic data connection and the supplied SnapLink Magnetic Cable handle the data. N52-grade neodymium magnets in both the connection and the sleeve keep everything aligned and attached.

The result supports direct external recording of Apple ProRes 4K at up to 120fps on compatible iPhones — which is the genuinely useful capability here, and the reason the form factor matters rather than being merely clever.

The enclosure is precision-machined from a single piece of metal, with a custom ultra-thin PCB and high-density NAND stacking inside to make the thinness possible.

Be clear about the speed

Read speeds reach 1,050MB/s and writes 1,000MB/s. That is respectable, but it is USB 3.2 Gen 2 territory rather than anything approaching a Thunderbolt drive — Samsung’s T9 manages roughly double, and a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure several times that.

So this is not a general-purpose editing drive, and it would be a mistake to buy it as one. It is a phone accessory that happens to be an SSD. For iPhone filmmakers recording ProRes it solves a real problem elegantly; for offloading cards to a laptop at the end of a shoot, a conventional portable SSD will be faster and almost certainly cheaper.

Two other things to note: it requires a USB-C iPhone, so the 15 series or later, and MagSafe attachment varies by model and case. It also is not available yet — 512GB and 1TB versions arrive in Q4 2026, and Lexar has not announced pricing.

The AI storage side

Lexar is also showing what it calls AI Storage Core: an AI-grade Gen5 SSD and Gen5 Storage Stick, with bandwidth up to 11GB/s, aimed at compact AI devices that need to hold large local models and switch between them quickly.

Underneath sits a self-developed Gen5 controller from parent company Longsys, built on a 5nm process with a DRAM-less architecture, alongside Lexar’s Luma Bridge technology. Luma Bridge uses workload scheduling, predictive prefetch and cache management to cut DRAM requirements by around 40% — which matters for anyone running large models on a compact machine, where memory is the binding constraint.

That is concept territory rather than product, but it is a reasonable indication of where storage is heading as local AI moves onto desktops. Lexar is also expanding into commercial PC storage and a dedicated dashcam drive range for electric vehicles.

Lexar Muse Ultra-Slim Portable SSD: Specifications

Thickness: approximately 3.8mm at thickest point, tapering to 1mm at the edge.
Construction: precision-machined unibody metal enclosure, custom ultra-thin PCB with high-density NAND stacking.
Read speed: up to 1,050MB/s.
Write speed: up to 1,000MB/s.
Connection: proprietary PogoPin magnetic data connection with supplied SnapLink Magnetic Cable; N52-grade neodymium magnets in connection and sleeve.
Mounting: magnetic carry sleeve attaching to compatible MagSafe iPhone models.
Capacities: 512GB and 1TB.
Compatibility: iPhone (USB-C models, iPhone 15 series or later), iPad, Mac and other USB-C devices; supports direct external recording of Apple ProRes 4K up to 120fps on compatible iPhones.
Note: MagSafe attachment and ProRes recording compatibility vary by iPhone model and case.

Price and availability

The Lexar Muse Ultra-Slim Portable SSD will be available in 512GB and 1TB capacities from Q4 2026. Pricing has not been announced, and regional availability may vary. Lexar is showing the range at IFA 2026 from 4 to 8 September at Messe Berlin, Level 1, Hall 20, Stand 101, in the Content Creation area near the North entrance.