Growing up hearing stories from my parents about the early days of the computing industry in the 1970s and 80s, I was fascinated by tales of room-sized machines and hard drives the size of washing machines that could barely store a few megabytes. Fast forward to today, and it’s genuinely astounding how much storage capacity we can fit into a space smaller than a key. That contrast is on full display with this incredibly compact USB-C solid-state drive from Japanese company SunEast, which manages to squeeze up to 512GB of storage into a body smaller than most Bluetooth dongles. It’s the kind of device that makes it entirely feasible to carry around something like the entire Library of Congress in your pocket—or at least a healthy chunk of your media collection.
While it’s clearly marketed toward mobile users—especially phones and tablets with USB-C ports—I can’t see any reason why this drive wouldn’t be just as useful when plugged into a laptop or desktop, functioning like a micro-sized flash drive with the performance benefits of an SSD. The tiny form factor, just 20mm by 10.6mm, makes it ideal for ultra-portable setups, and while it connects over USB 3.2 Gen 1, SunEast estimates read speeds at up to 450MB/s, which should be more than adequate for most casual use cases like media storage or document backup. DigitalTrends notes that it’s not yet officially on sale, even in Japan, but it’s expected to launch in 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB options. Given that SunEast already sells hardware internationally, it wouldn’t be surprising to see this show up in global markets soon—especially as more travelers and remote workers look for lightweight, compact storage options that don’t compromise on speed or versatility.
