Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
Crucial has always been a company that always carries a professional image, and the X10 Pro 2TB, like the X9 Pro 2TB, is there to help you keep that impression. The look has been updated to make it more modern looking compared to the X6 and X8, and especially more compact compared to the latter. The rounded corners and sharp lines look conservative but modern. Crucial's logo is placed in the center of the matte aluminum enclosure. Meanwhile, distinct angles give the X10 Pro 2TB look more interesting visually. Aluminum is lightweight and great for heat dissipation to prevent thermal throttling, and the matte black finish is mostly fingerprint resistant. All in all, I found this slim and sleek solid state drive feels solid and flexes to nothing.
The Crucial X10 Pro 2TB weighs about 42g without the cables and is approximately 65mm wide, 50mm deep, and 10mm thick per my measurements. According to the company, the X10 Pro is designed to handle drops up to 7.5 feet on carpeted floors, although there is no guarantee there will be no cosmetic damage. That said, if you are paranoid about the appearance of your electronics, the Crucial X10 Pro 2TB should have no problems holding up to everyday use; unless, of course, you do something extreme to try to intentionally cause damage to it. The Crucial X10 Pro 2TB is IP55 certified for water, dust, and sand resistance.
One 16cm long USB Type-C to USB Type-C cable is included and plugs into the left side of the drive. The included cable seems a bit short, and there is no USB Type-A adapter. This is probably a fair compromise in 2023, considering pretty much every new PC has a USB Type-C port. Because the X10 Pro has an NVMe solid state drive inside and uses the USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface, the port already provides all the power it needs; no external AC adapter is required.
As it is with the front of the Crucial X10 Pro 2TB, the aluminum back has a matte finish. A series of regulatory logos and the unit's serial number is found on this side as well. On the inscriptions, you will see this is the 2TB model and the SSD is a product of Thailand. There are also 1TB and 4TB variants of the Crucial X10 Pro.
A hole at the corner of the external SSD can be used to attach to something like a lanyard. Inside it is a white LED that glows constant white when the device is powered and slowly fades in and out where there is disk activity.
To add to the professional credentials of the Crucial X10 Pro 2TB, this SSD has 256‐bit AES hardware encryption with password protection. Crucial will release a utility for OS-agnostic data protection, but it is also compatible with Windows BitLocker to Go and MacOS FileVault. I think this is a key feature, considering this drive can hold 2TB of data and could result in a serious disk of a data security incident if not encrypted.
I am not entirely sure what drive and controller resides inside the Crucial X10 Pro 2TB. The company does not post the rated write endurance either. But what we can do is find out how it performs in the next few pages.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black
Motherboard: ASUS ProArt B660-Creator D4
RAM: Crucial Ballistix DDR4-3600 4x32GB
Graphics: ASUS Dual GeForce GTX 1060 3GB
Chassis: NZXT H710i
Storage: Kingston KC3000 1TB, Western Digital WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD 1TB
Power: Seasonic PRIME Ultra Titanium 850W
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Crucial X10 Pro 2TB
- ADATA Elite SE880 1TB
- Crucial X6 2TB
- Crucial X8 1TB
- Crucial X8 2TB
- Crucial X9 Pro 2TB
- LaCie Mobile SSD 500GB
- LaCie Rugged SSD 1TB
- Lexar SL660 BLAZE 1TB
- Lexar Professional SL100 Pro 500GB
- Western Digital Black P50 Game Drive SSD 1TB
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 8.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
7. Conclusion
