microSD Express format and 1TB microSD cards incoming

Martin Brinkmann
Feb 25, 2019
Hardware
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12

Today was a big day for the future of microSD cards. The SD Association unveiled the new microSD Express format, and the companies Micron and SanDisk the first 1 Terabyte microSD cards. In other words: more storage and a new standard promising faster transfer rates and reduced power consumption.

The new microSD Express format supports devices with PCIe 3.1 and NVMe 1.3 interfaces, and offers transfer speeds of up to 985 MB per second. The transfer rate matches that of SD Express cards.

SD Express cards, regardless of regular or micro, are fully backwards compatible. Customers can insert Express cards into their devices and access all files on the cards on their devices. Performance may suffer if the interfaces don't support the new standard or newer standards, but access is guaranteed and that is usually what counts.

The microSD Express cards should consume less power than traditional storage cards. The cards are ideal for applications that benefit from faster transfer speeds and situations where power consumption needs to be kept to a minimum.

microsd express
via https://twitter.com/SD_Association

The faster speeds may improve the gaming experience, the recording of 4K or virtual reality videos, and anything else that benefits from fast read or write speeds.

Different types of microSD cards such as microSD HC, XC and UC Express, will become available in the future.

The SD Association published a microSD Express whitepaper. It offers additional details on the Express standard.

It will take a while before devices that support the standard will become broadly available.

1 Terabyte microSD cards

Two companies, Micro and SanDisk (Western Digital), revealed the first 1 Terabyte microSD cards at the Mobile World Congress today.

The 1 Terabyte cards double the supported storage of microSD cards.

Western Digital advertises the 1TB SanDisk Extreme UHS-I microSDXC card as the world's fastest and largest UHS-I microSDXC card. The manufacturer lists a read speed of up to 160 MB/s and a write speed of up to 90 MB/s. The SanDisk card will be available for $449.99; a 400 Gigabyte card that offers the same specification is available for $109.99.

Micron's c200 1TB microSDXC UHS-I card supports read speeds of up to 100 MB/s and write speeds of up to 95 MB/s meeting UHS-I Speed Class 3 and Video Speed Class 30 specifications. Micron's card supports the A2 App Performance Class specification which promises faster loading speeds for Android apps and games saved on cards that support it.

Micron has not revealed the price for its 1 Terabyte microSD card yet.

Now you: Do you use microSD cards?

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microSD Express format and 1TB microSD cards incoming
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microSD Express format and 1TB microSD cards incoming
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Today was a big day for the future of microSD cards. The SD Association unveiled the new microSD Express format, and the companies Micron and SanDisk the first 1 Terabyte microSD cards.
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Comments

  1. John Fenderson said on February 28, 2019 at 7:57 pm
    Reply

    “Do you use microSD cards?”

    Yes, by the dozens. I’m not sure about 1TB cards, though — I tend to use SD cards so heavily enough that I burn them out in under a year. I wouldn’t want to burn out a $500 card!

  2. XenoSilvano said on February 28, 2019 at 2:30 am
    Reply

    @NotLivingHere + Rush

    that is the same sentiment the both of you will have when 500TB cards will be announced, there will not be much of a point in bothering with 1TB cards then

  3. Jeff said on February 27, 2019 at 7:15 pm
    Reply

    Well waiting for smartphones to finally start supporting microSD Express.

    1. John Fenderson said on February 28, 2019 at 7:59 pm
      Reply

      @Jeff:

      In this day and age, we’re lucky to find smartphones that support any sort of SD card at all.

  4. Rush said on February 26, 2019 at 5:35 pm
    Reply

    I have a need for a Power MicroSD..but I will wait for a year or so….when the price comes wayyyy down.

  5. NotLivingHere said on February 26, 2019 at 2:05 pm
    Reply

    I’ll wait for the price to drop to at least $ 19.99, then will get excited about getting one…

  6. Dave said on February 26, 2019 at 7:08 am
    Reply

    Finally, this should have come in 2016. I blame the iphones 8% of phone users for this … they never had SD cards which means that Apple actively slows down technology progress and development.

  7. Valrobex said on February 26, 2019 at 1:23 am
    Reply

    I use micro SD cards on all three of my Dell laptops for file backups. This article presents good news for me as these larger Micro SD cards will help me eliminate carrying flash drives for some of my file backups. When they become available I’ll be able to look for “whatever” in only one drive rather than trying to remember which flash drive I stored the file I’m looking for. I will however, wait a bit for the price to reduce.

  8. supergirl said on February 26, 2019 at 12:44 am
    Reply

    WOW!
    How things have changed,
    I remember the saucer sized 170-kilobyte 5¼” disks for my Commodore 64

    you had to flip them over to get to the info on the other side…LoL

    Most games could fit on 1 of them…too

    Now a Terabyte the size of a fingernail….

    1. sonar said on February 26, 2019 at 9:47 pm
      Reply

      Finally we’ll have whole gaming history in a couple of memory cards. Nice.

  9. Paul(us) said on February 25, 2019 at 11:10 pm
    Reply

    I use up to (mostly 32 GB) 64 GB card for Raspberry Pi.
    Any idea or is there maybe any literature that those 1 TB cards will be working with Raspi?

    A related subject is the great specs from the Sandisk extreme 32 Gb A1.
    After 10,000 times of writing, “not to be killed”.
    Take a look at it: 13: 39 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQMrbKvE9Mw

  10. Yuliya said on February 25, 2019 at 6:10 pm
    Reply

    I have a 64 GB microSD in my phone. I could use a lrager one, I don’t know if I’d spend double the price of my phone on it though. The 400GB one seems fair, assuming I’ll be able to find it here for the equivalent of that price, I’d probably buy one.

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