Chinese gaming console makers have just taken the covers off a new external storage solution that rivals the microSD Express used by Nintendo for the Switch 2. According to The Verge, this new SSD form factor is more than three times faster than the microSD Express while keeping a footprint that’s only slightly larger. Storage manufacturer Biwin calls it the Mini SSD, while another OEM tagged it as the 1517, which refers to its dimensions and is similar to how JEDEC, the Joint Electron Device Engineering Council that defined the M.2 form factor, named other SSD form factors, like 2280, 2242, and 2230.
The so-called Mini SSD has a theoretical maximum sequential read speed of 3.7 GB/s and write speed of 3.4 GB/s. It connects to your system via PCIe 4.0 x2 and is currently offered at 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. By comparison, microSD Express can only support a maximum transfer speed of up to 985 MB/s. Full-sized SD Express cards can have a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 3,940 MB/s, making them marginally faster than the 1517 — but they’re over three times larger than the tiny Mini SSD.
