If you want to add a lot of storage to your phone, Nintendo Switch, tablet, camera, or other device with a microSD card slot, then you’re in luck. Samsung has revealed its first 1TB microSD cards.
A few other companies already sell 1TB microSD cards, such as SanDisk, TeamGroup, and Lexar, but this is the first time Samsung has done it. The 1TB microSD cards were announced back in February, and use Samsung’s eight-generation V-NAND memory technology.
The new 1TB Pro Plus card offers the best performance, with a UHS Speed Grade 3 (U3) for recording video up to 4K resolution, a video speed class rating of V30 for file transfers, and an A2 rating for improved performance when running applications and games on the card. Samsung is promising sequential read speeds of up to 180 MB/s, and sequential writes of up to 130 MB/s.
The 1TB EVO Select is a more budget-friendly alternative, with the same capacity, U3 speed grade, and A2 rating. However, the maximum speeds are a bit slower: you get sequential reads at up to 160 MB/s and sequential writes up to 120 MB/s.
Those read and write speeds are decent for an SD card, but still below the ~500 MB/s reads and writes you can get with a modern SATA or USB SSD. Those cards are also far slower than a typical NVMe drive, with newer models pushing 5-7GB/s. Still, you can’t stick a new NVMe SSD in a Nintendo Switch or a GoPro camera, so there’s still a reason for microSD cards to exist.
You can buy the 1TB Pro Plus and 1TB Evo Select cards now from Amazon. Samsung’s own online store also has the Pro Plus and Evo Select cards, and they should appear at other retail stores soon. The prices are set at $120 and $90, respectively.
Source: Samsung
