SSDs come in in various sizes, but the smallest ones are usually not made with PCs in mind. One example is the one called Planck, labelled as the “world’s smallest”, but made for phones in mind. There’s another contender, made by a Chinese company called Biwin, and it’s simply called the CL100. And now, it looks like it’s finally on sale in its home market.
In case you missed it, the Biwin CL100 is dubbed the first Mini SSD, it measures 16 x 17 x 1.4 mm. But not only does it not fit into a microSD card slot, with its size, it obviously is not using more standard connectors like M.2 So to use it, you’ll need a proprietary adapter tray.
That being said, the company did get two Chinese gaming handheld makers to support the format. XDA also reports that the company as claiming that it is trying to get it used in ultra-thin laptops, mini PCs and other gaming handhelds.
The Biwin CL100 SSD connects via PCIe 4.0, with read and write speeds of 3,700 MB/s and 3,400 MB/s respectively. There are also apparently three capacity choices – 512GB, 1TB and 2TB. And in its home market of China, they are priced at CNY599 (~RM348), CNY1,099 (~RM638) and CNY2,199 (~RM1,277). But for now, there’s no word on a wider availability, in terms of both markets as well as supported devices.