SanDisk shows off the world’s smallest 1TB USB-C flash drive at CES

Every year at CES, among all the TVs and laptops and gadgets, is the ever-escalating competition of who can cram the most storage into a single flash drive. This year, SanDisk showed up with a prototype of what’s supposed to be the world’s smallest 1TB USB-C flash drive.

It’s not the most storage we’ve ever seen in a flash drive — that title still goes to last year’s 2TB Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate GT — but SanDisk should be commended anyway, given that its slimmed-down prototype is far smaller than Kingston’s chunky zinc-alloy case. Plus, the SanDisk prototype fully embraces USB-C, instead of clinging to the past with USB 3.0, meaning that you’ll be able to use it to directly transfer storage to, say, an Android phone in addition to computers.

At this point, the drive is just a prototype (albeit a working one), with no price or release date announced. And perhaps that’s for the best: a full-sized 1TB USB-C SSD already costs in the range of $350, so it’s hard to imagine that SanDisk’s model will be affordable should it reach the market.