External storage drives are things that you either hardly ever use or they're a daily part of your tech ensemble. SSD versions are often small, lightweight, and really tough but the best part about them is they're not very expensive. Unlike the new Pro Mini from Iodyne (via The Verge) which demands an asking price of $1,500 bar five bucks.

Admittedly, that's for the 4 TB model (the 8 TB one is a relative bargain at $2,195) but what exactly are you getting for the same price as a really good RTX 4070 Super gaming PC or two PS5 Pros? An awful lot of tech features, that's what, though whether any of them are of interest to you is another matter.

Let's start with the fact that it has active cooling which, to the best of my knowledge, isn't something that the majority of external SSDs ever have. Eschewing fans entirely, the Iodyne Pro Mini boasts a dual Frore AirJet cooling system, which is all solid-state and fancy-tech. You might wonder just why such a device needs a cooler but I suspect it's because the whole thing is using a custom processor and NAND flash chips, designed by Iodyne.

I don't think it's down with the data transfer speed, though, despite using USB4. Iodyne claims a sustained transfer rate of 3 GB/s which is certainly faster than external SSDs—which typically only reach a peak of 2 GB/s—but it's not super fast. Still, not to be sniffed at and, because it's USB4, it'll work in any USB port, as well as Thunderbolt.

The Pro Mini is marketed at professional content creators so the rest of its features are all about security. For example, you can unlock via an NFC passkey on your phone and it has optional support for Apple and Google's device location tracking network (done through Bluetooth signalling).

Anything stored on the drive is encrypted using the XTS-AES-256 (pdf warning) algorithm and there's even RAID 6 redundancy, which suggests there are a lot of NAND flash chips inside the aluminium casing.

Rounding out the 'oooh, that's fancy' features is a 2.1-inch electronic paper display, with a 240 x 146 resolution. The screen is powered by a battery that recharges every time you plug it in and the display can be configured to show anything from a simple name and date to the amount of storage used, and even QR and barcodes.

I can't see any details about the exact size and weight of the Pro Mini on Iodyne's site but as you can see in the above video, it doesn't look especially bulky or weighty. To be honest, I think the whole thing looks really neat, even though it's not something I'd ever need. But that price…oh boy, that's a lot of money.

Sure, there's an awful lot of stuff inside that's unique to Iodyne, and the company is using relatively few off-the-shelf components. But it still seems like an enormous chunk of cash to throw down on something, when you can get two 4 TB LaCie Rugged Pro external SSDs ($629.99 on Amazon) for the same price.

However, the LaCie drive doesn't have anything like the same feature set as the Pro Mini.

If all those features are just what you need and you work in an industry where performance and security are critical, then it's probably on par for that market. Unfortunately, Iodyne is only accepting pre-orders at the moment and only through specific channel partners, with the first orders expected to be shipped early next year.