Since we tested both the Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro series we had a short discussion with Luke Ottrey, SSD Product Manager at Micron Technology about the new product lineup and in general questions about Crucial SSD products.

1. What is the current Crucial strategy for Internal and External/portable users? I mean can we expect more products for internal or external users?

Luke: Although I’m not able to comment on future internal and/or external storage products and our forthcoming roadmap, what I can tell you is that we’re excited about our robust current internal and external storage product portfolio! And we will definitely continue to keep in contact with you as we are ready to make future product announcements.

2. The new performance numbers of b)oth the X9Pro and X10pro series are impressive and on par with "the competition". The press release talks about the new design from zero ground, can you give us more details about the used components/controllers being used in both products? Are they built from Crucial or like the T700 series are they in collaboration with other vendors (like Phison?)

Luke: Great storage products start with high-quality, reliable, advanced Micron NAND technology. These product attributes underpin the performance of our new Crucial X9 Pro and X10 Pro Portable SSDs, so consumers can trust their most important memories, files and/or data when saved to our devices. The X9 Pro and X10 Pro are built using advanced Micron 3D TLC NAND. We’re not able to share other specific component level details such as controller, NAND layer count, etc; but what we can share is that if you opened up a Crucial X9 Pro you would find a SMI SM2320 ASIC. At Crucial, we are committed to meeting or exceeding the published specifications and standards we’ve defined for the X9 Pro and the X10 Pro (like how the X9 Pro can write up to 970MB/s throughout the entirety of the drive). 

3. The new X9 / X10 Pro series are again "limited" to 4TB maximum external size. Is this a limitation of the current DRAM/Controller generation or maybe we can expect higher sizes in the near future?

Luke: Unfortunately, we cannot comment on any future products in our pipeline.

4. The new T700 Internal SSD we recently reviewed, had a very high and good performance, how come Crucial is one of the first to adopt PCIe Gen5 NVME drives since in the past had a different product lineup policy

Luke: Micron’s strategy in consumer products is to make, market and sell great products that are fit-for-market at the right time. With today’s demanding applications and user workloads, there is a need for increased performance, greater storage capacity, and memory bandwidth to fully utilize the capabilities of the latest CPU platforms. The Crucial T700 was designed to help undertake the heaviest of workloads to ensure consistency and greater performance for its users.

5. We have seen from other vendors internal NVME drives reaching up to 8TB, can we expect a similar product from Crucial as well?

Luke: Micron unfortunately doesn’t comment on future products that may or may not come to market.

6. Popular portable gaming devices, like the Valve SteamDeck and recent Asus ROG Ally, uses M2230 storage for storing data, will Crucial introduce M2230 NVME SSDs for this market as well?

Luke: Micron unfortunately doesn’t comment on future products that may or may not come to market.

7. Recently we witnessed a big decrease in retail prices of storage products, is this the best period for users to buy Crucial NVME SSDs? How do you expect the retail market will head in the next few months?
   

Luke: Micron’s perspectives on the current and future pricing environment are best addressed in the comments we make in our quarterly earnings.

8. Both X9Pro/X10Pro use a "special" Type-C cable for optimal performance. During our X10 tests, we also witnessed similar behavior with reduced performance when using other vendors' Type-C cables. Will you offer replacement cables in case a user breaks or lost its Type-C cable?
   

Luke: If consumers damage their high performance USB-C cable, which are included with the Crucial USB products, we suggest they contact our customer support team who are there to help consumers solve their problems.

9. The X10Pro series compared with other drives like the Sandisk Extreme Pro has almost half the weight and volume, how difficult was it to design the new X10Pro series?
   

Luke: A sentence, a paragraph or even a whole dissertation cannot summarize the amazing achievements that the Micron cross functional teams achieved with the Crucial X10 Pro and Crucial X9 Pro.

10. With the introduction of the X9 Pro series, with only a $10 difference (at least for the 1TB/2TB variants), why a user should/or not prefer the X8 series?
    

Luke: Pricing is subject to change on a daily basis; and over time trends may emerge.  We encourage users to select a product that is best suited for their own individual purposes.