OneXPlayer recently announced a new device, the OneXPlayer X1 Air, and while I have no interest in that at all, what did interest me is a new expandable storage option for this device, which is dubbed Mini SSD. Size wise it is a little larger than microSD and has impressive speeds. After seeing the specs and price of this storage option all I could think is wow, I wish my Switch 2 used something like this and not MicroSD Express. Future handhelds in the Steam Deck / Rog Ally lines and others could also benefit greatly here. Sure I have no problem opening up my deck/ally to whack a 2TB drive in but a lot do, and it would be useful to also have space for 2 fast drives.
"This Mini SSD is ultra-compact—roughly the size of a memory card—designed for quick and effortless installation." Installation of these looks similar to a sim card in a phone. you sit the Mini SSD in a tray. Price wise they are selling the 512gb version for $79 and the 1TB version for $109. Far cheaper than the equivalent Micro SD Express cards which are more like $120/$220 for 512gb/1TB, and with a read speed in excess of 4 times.
While the OneXPlayer X1 Air might be the only device to support something like this now, this technology, or something similar, would be extremely useful to see in other handheld devices. Be that the Steam Deck 2, ROG Ally 2, Switch 2 revision or any other future gaming handhelds, this looks like the best solution for easy to use expandable storage.
Edit: The GPD Win 5 is also using this storage solution. It's a new storage format developed by the chinese company Biwin. You can read more about this new storage format here: The shockingly small Mini SSD threatens microSD dominance yet depends on Biwin seeking SDA or PCI-SIG approval to succeed worldwide | TechRadar
