SanDisk's new 256GB microSD Express and 2TB microSD cards
Posted by Constellation16@reddit | hardware | View on Reddit | 43 comments
SanDisk's 256GB microSD Express card and their 2TB microSD cards are now up for sale. Both were announced earlier this year.
After the initial uneventful release of SD Express cards 3 years ago, eg by Adata, this is the first of a new batch of announced cards on market. By absolute chance this all coincides with the upcoming release of a certain gaming handheld. The MSRP of 66€ is still 3x that of standard UHS-I cards, but it's already a lot lower than the market price of 90€ for the Adata card or often outrageous prices for UHS-II cards. SD Express utilizes PCIe/NVMe and reaches ~1GB/s full-duplex in this initial configuration.
Their new 2TB microSD UHS-I cards cost a staggering MSRP of 280€/320€. Despite announcements by others, these are the first actually for sale, I think. What I find most interesting about them though is that they use yet another variant of SanDisk's semi-proprietary "QuickFlow" technology (trademark for DDR200/DDR225/etc) that overclocks the UHS-I bus to exceed the typical 104 MB/s. The new iteration reaches 250 MB/s, which puts it close to the 312 MB/s of UHS-II. Both are half-duplex.
From what I understand the initial release of it in 2018 supported 170 MB/s, in 2022 this got bumped to 200 MB/s, and now 250 MB/s by specifically only these 2TB cards. Support in generic card readers or devices is basically non-existent though, so it's only useful to quickly copy over data by utilizing their special card reader. The new higher speeds require yet again new readers. By now there are also such cards and readers by Samsung, Lexar, Kingston, etc. The SD Association still hasn't standardized this technology though. Absolute mess.
The whole SD market is in a bit of flux right with multiple ways to achieve higher speeds. First this proprietary technology, then some newer more affordable UHS-II cards, even though support for it is still only slowly expanding outside cameras despite marginal extra cost in readers, and then the new SD Express cards which will hopefully just become the new standard.
Lately there have also been some UHS-II microSD cards for gaming handhelds like ROG Ally & co, when it has traditionally only been full-size cards for cameras. This development is likely short-lived, as I expected they will all quickly move to microSD Express.
wizfactor@reddit
For the sake of future gaming handhelds, I really hope SD Express takes off.
Even though DirectStorage is underdelivering right now, it’s possible that raising the speed floor of mass storage will allow us to eventually kill loading screens for good.
iamjoehill1@reddit
Nintendo Switch 2 incoming!!!
Bronze_Lemur@reddit
You were a prophet
Alcoholikaust@reddit
sadly only 256GB for now-
imgoodatcomplaining@reddit
Actually - if you'd look besides Sandisk - Theres adata or lexar ... I've seen legit 1tb express - out of stock but in existence
Alcoholikaust@reddit
Lexar just announced the 1TB like an hour after I posted but thanks for heads up! $200 too steep as all told I’ll be in the hole for a switch 2 and games ~$600
imgoodatcomplaining@reddit
Long hours on ur planet https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/1i84uve/lexar_has_announced_a_1_tb_micro_sd_express_for/
iamjoehill1@reddit
So glad I ordered one when I posted this lmao
aeseth@reddit
Well it finally have a use for that Nintendo Switch 2.
Good lawd better make it cheaper.
TungstenOrchid@reddit
It doesn't seem to be listed on the SanDisk / WesternDigital online store yet.
Wonder what the price will be.
Constellation16@reddit (OP)
https://shop.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/microsd-cards/sandisk-microsd-express-memory-card?sku=SDSQXFN-256G-GN4NN
https://shop.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/microsd-cards/sandisk-extreme-uhs-i-microsd?sku=SDSQXAV-2T00-GN6MA
https://shop.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/microsd-cards/sandisk-extreme-pro-uhs-i-microsd?sku=SDSQXCD-2T00-GN6MA
vagaliki@reddit
So it's fast but still an order of magnitude slower than Nvme PCI gen 4 SSDs (and 1/3 the speed of gen 3)
TungstenOrchid@reddit
Very nice. Thanks!
Goats_2022@reddit
Mmmm am still yet to understand how to fit 2T on an SD card.
Most of the time they are just fakes
Gippy_@reddit
10 years ago people wondered how 128GB could fit on a MicroSD card. 2TB will be nothing 10 years from now.
steik@reddit
Doubt it... Consumer storage products have really stagnated in capacity gains over the last 10 years years. We had 2 TB NVME drives in 2016. (note specifically how the price is linear across all the models, 2TB is ~2x as expensive as 1TB).
Today, over 8 years later 4 TB is the current "reasonably priced" maximum capacity. Technically 8 TB NVME drives exist but they are stupid expensive(well over 2x the cost of 4TB) and there is no real demand from consumers and no signs whatsoever of this changing. People are still building PC's with 1TB drives. If we assume that maybe those 8TB priced drives will go down to reasonable prices in the next 2 years, then we have a rather paltry 4x size increase over 10 years.
The "problem" is that the size of the data being used by consumers simply isn't increasing much at all. The market has stopped chasing ever-increasing video and picture resolutions. 8k TV's are going nowhere and no content is being made for them. There hasn't even been any movement in creating a new optical drive standard for distributing such content either because everyone prefers streaming now (both consumers and corporations) - which is already way less bitrate than a bluray disk will provide, which means that in reality while you may get more "pixels" on an 8k TV, it'll be the same or worse quality because of compression. It's the same across the board, cameras aren't chasing megapixels anymore, games aren't getting massively bigger (there's outliers, but those outliers have existed for a long time), etc, etc.
Admirable_Zombie5245@reddit
Yep, bought some NVme, HDD's and MicroSD in 2021, today those same models are for sale and they are in fact more expensive now.
I hope gaming handhelds increase the demand of higher SD cards and push competition
Culbrelai@reddit
Preach. Consumer storage is a bag of asses. I literally bought an enterprise 16tb SSD for a LOT cheaper than two 8tb m.2s
gingeydrapey@reddit
Or rather transistors have stopped shrinking and we've almost saturated how much we can fit in a certain area.
steik@reddit
This has slowed down progress yes, but it has nothing to do with the fact that consumer demand for storage hasn't been increasing over the past 10+ years. The vast majority of people won't ever need more than 1 TB storage. Prebuilts and laptops are still being sold with 256/512 GB storage. This is not because "transistors aren't shrinking anymore", it's because we aren't giving anyone a real reason to need more storage. Bluray came out in 2006 and is still the best quality video distribution method available. 99% of people can't even tell the difference between a bluray and a low bitrate 1080p stream.
Strazdas1@reddit
sounds to me like bad consumers who need to be taught to how to archive things properly.
Technically best bitrate, but thats because we went for worst possible option - streaming.
wow i had no idea so many people needed glasses.
gingeydrapey@reddit
It has everything to do with it. People "don't need more" because content that needs more can't be made due to diminishing returns in transistor sizes.
steik@reddit
You are literally just ignoring everything I'm saying. Blurays don't even use transistors, and we most certainly could make an optical medium that has 10-20x the capacity if there was demand for it, but there isn't. Because people CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE. It has nothing to do with transistor sizes.
gingeydrapey@reddit
The hardware needed to play blurays does. As do the screens needed to view them.
Blueberryburntpie@reddit
I have a still working 32MB flash drive. Mostly limited to word documents.
NeonBellyGlowngVomit@reddit
Thinner layers, more layers, denser layers.
Write on a piece of paper 1 inch thick letters that are one inch high.
Now write on a piece of paper half inch thick with letters that are half inch high. And now lay two of those half inch thick layers on top of each other. Congrats, you just quadrupled your 'storage' capacity.
These modern cards are like stacking 10 layers of a normal thickness sheet of paper but also writing letters on them that are 1/256 of an inch high.
Unfortunately, more layers with smaller gates means the cards now create more heat, are more sensitive/fragile and have more potential for defects.
Goats_2022@reddit
Ok can that justify the price you find them on Amazon or Aliexpress, even cheaper than a SATA drive of the same capacity?
NeonBellyGlowngVomit@reddit
End consumer MicroSD flash is junk grade, basically. The good stuff is reserved for server grade components. We get the binned down crap.
A MicroSD card is rated for a fraction of the total write endurance of a SATA or NVMe drive and even a magnitude less than server drives. There's no garbage collection on MicroSD cards, so you will see then slow down substantially as the media becomes more full.
Tasty-Traffic-680@reddit
Die stacking. Assuming these are the same as the Kioxia card (WD and Kioxia share NAND tech and manufacturing facilities), they stack 16 1Tb dies on top of each other.
rynoweiss@reddit
They're not the same card as the Kioxia has much lower rated speeds. The controller and/or NAND is different.
Tasty-Traffic-680@reddit
My bad, you're right - Kioxia is straight UHS with no DDR mode supported. Otherwise the underlying principle is the same - stacking slices.
Xylamyla@reddit
Was anyone ever able to buy the Express card? I’m trying to buy one right now but my order gets immediately cancelled.
Gippy_@reddit
The biggest potential market for fast MicroSD cards, phones, has mostly ditched the SD card slot because it's more profitable to solder flash memory and then charge a ridiculous premium for it. As far as phones that can record 4K60 video, there's the Sony Xperia... and that's it?
ilker-yoldas@reddit
Sharp Aquos too
Culbrelai@reddit
Oh lord. Storage Standards with express in their name do not do well. (What the eff happened to sata express?)
ConsistencyWelder@reddit
Had too many SD card just suddenly fail on me and never working again to trust them with 2TB of data.
iwannasilencedpistol@reddit
A microSD transferring at 1GB/s and not cooking itself is some truly futuristic/next-gen type shit
PMARC14@reddit
The main thing may be that the reader needs to provide the heat dissipation
Ok_Confection_10@reddit
Just give it a hwak tuah spit on that thang
One080@reddit
Check out this brand called Exascend, they are out there with great products, though won’t be able to compete a lot with the big brands. Would love a comparison testing b/w all different brands to really see the difference
rynoweiss@reddit
Pretty wild that the Extreme and Extreme Pro have a $50/25% price difference, and the only difference in the specs is 250/150 read/write on the Extreme Pro vs 240/140 on the Extreme.
Exist50@reddit
Find it interesting that the microSD express card is only A1 rated. Wonder what's up with the random performance.
Constellation16@reddit (OP)
A2 mandates support for cache and queuing commands in SD fallback mode. Host support for is rare and only lately appearing in linux and only possible for native readers, eg connect by pcie. And it turns out many of A2 cards they've been selling since years are actually buggy. Not surprising for such a paper feature.
I wouldn't give too much thought about that. It's really only relevant for SD mode, which might be implemented by a separate IP block. If you look at the 2021 review of SD Express cards by Anandtech you can see that the IOPS in SD mode are nothing exceptional, but are much better in SDe mode.