After having tested the Crucial X10 Pro series, we were sure that the Crucial X9 Pro series will also deliver the advertised performance and features that Crucial mentioned in their official press release. Both the Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro series were designed from scratch by using Micron's TLC NAND and single-ASIC portable storage architecture. While the Crucial X10 Pro is the top-of-the-line external portable SSD, the X9 Pro series aims for entry-level users that simply wish for small portable solutions with good reading/writing speeds and affordable retail prices. Both the Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro series can be found at 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB configurations with different retail prices and around a $40~$50 price difference.

The Crucial X9 Pro features the same footprint as the X10 Pro (65x50mm) and weighs even less (38gr vs 48gr). Both products have the same design but different colors on top (X9 Pro silver vs X10Pro black). The build quality is top notch with a combination of aluminum and rubberized feel at the bottom. The retail package includes a Type-C-to-C cable that is 24cm long. There are no USB Type-A adapters included, probably Crucial will offer one in the near future for a small cost. The drive comes pre-formatted at exFAT file system which means that the Crucial 10 Pro 2TB is truly universal with almost all currently sold devices that have TypeC connection (PC/MAC/Android/Linux/Playstation systems, cannot be sure about Xbox, even Crucial claims it is).

Passing to the performance area, this drive is advertised as capable of reading/writing up to 1050MB/sec when paired with a USB Gen 3.2 TypeC port. That means the X9 Pro is more "compatible" with the wider area of personal computers since the X10 Pro requires USB Gen 3.2 2x2 Type C port to work at its maximum 2100MB/sec performance mode. From our tests, we did see reading up to 1020Mb/sec, while writing was somewhat slower with 920MB/sec under CrystalDiskMark software. The drive comes with the exFAT default file system and if formatted under NTFS you can expect higher performance. When writing very big files, we didn't notice any slowdown, meaning this drive will sustain high writing speeds (with single large files), which is what many users will want, since photographers will transfer/backup their projects on the go with the Crucial X9 Pro.

Comparing this drive with other solutions from Sandisk and Samsung, all drives seem to have similar performance and warranty, however, the Crucial X9 Pro wins at the weight with only 38gr! Overall we find the Crucial X9 Pro 2ΤΒ a solid solution for portable road warriors who wish for high reading/writing speeds, affordable price, 5 years of warranty, IP55 rating protection, high build-quality, small footprint, and 256 AES HW + PP hardware security protocols.