Samsung introduces new microSD cards with higher speed and more capacity

Samsung Brand Memory has introduced a whole range of new microSD cards. Some models are based on the SD Express standard and therefore achieve speeds that exceed those of SATA SSDs. Others rely on a particularly large capacity.

Samsung’s new SD Express microSD cards in detail

Previous UHS-1 memory cards in microSD format achieve a speed of up to 200 MB/s. The SD Express standard was introduced in 2020 and achieves data rates of up to 985 MB/s.

The new microSD cards from Samsung, which the manufacturer has now unveiled, cannot quite reach this speed. However, according to Samsung, read speeds of up to 800 MB/s should still be possible thanks to the SD Express interface.

This would make the compact memory cards around 1.4 times faster than SATA SSDs, which achieve speeds of up to 560 MB/s. Compatible cameras, smartphones and consoles in particular – such as possibly the upcoming Nintendo Switch 2 – should benefit from the additional speeds.

However, the new SD cards will be backwards compatible and can therefore also be used in older devices. In this case, however, at the maximum speed of the respective interface, which is limited to 104 MB/s for UHS-1 microSD cards.

Corresponding card readers in the SD Express standard do not yet exist, but the new SD Express microSD card with 256 GB storage capacity from Samsung is not expected to be released until the end of the year. This would be ideal timing, as Nintendo’s new console is expected in 2025.

UHS-1 microSD card with up to 1 TB capacity

Those looking for greater capacity rather than higher speed will be served by the second new product from Samsung. The new UHS-1 microSD card from the Evo Plus and Pro Plus series will come with up to one terabyte of storage space.

According to Samsung, this is made possible by V-NAND Gen 8 technology. At the same time, the cards are protected against water, extreme temperatures, drops, wear and tear as well as X-rays and magnetic radiation.

The release is scheduled for the third quarter of 2024, but the manufacturer intends to provide further information later in the year.