- MicroSD card survey examined 200 fashions to uncover fakes, efficiency gaps, and endurance failures
- Pretend flash was widespread in low-cost high-capacity playing cards, discarding knowledge previous true limits
- Identify-brand playing cards typically outperformed off-brand fashions in velocity, reliability, and whole write endurance
One man has taken the duty of testing microSD playing cards to a degree most customers would by no means entertain.
Over the course of a 12 months, tech fanatic Matt Cole purchased and examined 200 totally different fashions, starting from 8GB to 1TB, with a specific concentrate on figuring out fakes, testing efficiency, and measuring sturdiness.
Fifty-one of these playing cards failed throughout testing.
Writing over 100TB of knowledge per day
Cole is the creator of The Nice microSD Card Survey, a deep, evolving benchmark report (and a critical labor of affection), that started in July 2023.
He constructed a testing rig with eight machines and almost 70 card readers working constantly, writing over 100TB of knowledge per day.
To this point, the setup has written greater than 18 petabytes of knowledge to the playing cards underneath check circumstances. Impressively, his total effort is self-funded, though he does have an Amazon wishlist ought to anybody want to purchase him additional playing cards to check.
Cole’s objective was to know how these tiny storage gadgets differ throughout model, worth, and origin.
One in every of his most important targets is to determine “pretend flash,” the place a card tells the host system it has extra storage than it actually does.
A 1TB card may actually solely retailer 8GB. As soon as that actual restrict is reached, new knowledge is silently misplaced. He additionally highlights “skimpy flash,” the place a card is technically actual, however gives much less usable house than marketed, a standard challenge even amongst name-brand playing cards.
His survey doesn’t cease at capability. Cole additionally examined whether or not playing cards dwell as much as their marketed velocity class rankings, akin to U1, U3, or V30.
He ran sequential and random I/O checks, then tracked endurance by way of repeated write and skim cycles.
Some playing cards survived over 20,000 cycles, whereas others failed earlier than reaching 500. Temperature monitoring was additionally a part of the method, although it’s nonetheless unclear how a lot warmth impacts long-term efficiency.
Among the many finest microSD playing cards had been the Kingston Canvas Go! Plus 64GB, PNY PRO Elite Prime 64GB, SanDisk Excessive 64GB, Delkin Gadgets HYPERSPEED 128GB, and Samsung EVO Plus 64GB.
These fashions carried out effectively throughout a number of metrics and got here near marketed specs.
Cole’s weblog contains charts and summaries to assist patrons shortly discover dependable choices and it’s frankly a shocking piece of labor. He’s not achieved but both. Testing continues unabated, with extra playing cards in queue, hopefully together with a number of the largest capability fashions.
