21st August 2025 Ultra-compact Mini SSD combines speed and mobility Chinese company Biwin has revealed a new "Mini SSD" storage format that combines high speed and a tiny form factor.
At this year's Embedded World conference, Chinese company Biwin unveiled a groundbreaking form factor – Mini SSD, which sets an impressive new benchmark in portable storage technology. Measuring just 15 × 17 × 1.4 mm, barely larger than a micro-SIM or MicroSD, the Mini SSD promises extraordinary performance for its size, particularly tailored for mobile and embedded applications. The device uses PCIe Gen4x2 and NVMe 1.4, delivering read speeds up to 3,700 MB/s and write speeds up to 3,400 MB/s. This greatly exceeds even the latest microSD Express cards required for the Nintendo Switch 2, which have a maximum of 985 MB/s, less than one-third the speed. Full-sized SD Express cards can achieve data transfers of 3,940 MB/s, but occupy nearly twice the physical volume. Biwin's new Mini SSD format will be available in capacities ranging from 512 GB to 2 TB. They are designed to be hot-swappable, using a SIM-tray-style slot. Durability is enhanced with an IP68 rating for high resistance to water and dust, and the product remains intact if dropped from up to three metres. It also incorporates advanced firmware technologies – such as dynamic SLC caching, TRIM, and garbage collection – to ensure optimal performance and data reliability. These features work together to maintain consistent write speeds, prevent data fragmentation, and prolong the lifespan of the drive.
No pricing information is available yet, but the first devices to support Mini SSD will include gaming portables such as the GPD Win 5 (pictured here) and OneNetbook's upcoming OneXPlayer Super X hybrid laptop–tablet. In addition to gaming, Biwin is also marketing the format for laptops, tablets, smartphones, and cameras. Longer term, it could prove especially valuable for robotics, wearables, drones, and IoT hardware, where every cubic millimetre of space matters and high-speed storage can unlock new possibilities. It remains to be seen whether Mini SSD will gain enough traction to become a widely adopted standard, or whether it will remain a niche product used only in select devices. What is clear, however, is that China is once again demonstrating its ability to lead in technological development. By pushing storage into ever smaller and faster formats, Biwin's innovation could reshape expectations of portability and performance in the years ahead.
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