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MICRO SD card - Buyer's guide



Micro SDXC card – A small user's guide


 

When it comes to storage, nothing is enough for space hungry movies, games and apps. Today, I want to share a few thoughts about the card I’d purchased.

There are literally a bunch of SD cards with different storage parameters. Starting from 4 GB to 256 GB, as standard models. Cards sold in the market are divided into many categories. There are SD , SDHC and SDXC cards. Now we shall see what does this SD stand for and what exactly it is used for?

SD stands for Secure Digital i.e., to store photos, videos and apps on the mobile securely. Now to store them with or without encryption is purely at user’s discretion. The card is used mainly to store the photos, videos, apps, notes etc. that which cannot be stored on the phone memory since they might eat up more space. So, a separate card is sold in the market to access the data that you want it to be secure, separate and also easily transferable. When I say transferable it means that it can be moved/copied from SD card to a pc/laptop/tablet or may be to a phone for instance.
In my childhood days, I used to look at the cards which were called mini or micro SD cards. These were named probably because of their size. When I used to hold them, it would be just half an inch in its width and breadth with totally negligible thickness. They actually made a solid impression in my life. The one I had was 4 GB which was sold at 3,500 INR for Sony Ericsson phone (Sony Ericsson Z550i) at a Sony retailer. It was a gift from my father. It could hardly store some songs and few videos and would pop up a message saying memory’s full. But I enjoyed it a lot.
Now, let’s talk about the SD variants. As I have already told you the abbreviation and it’s use, we shall see what other cards can do and why they are named in different way.

  1. SD card – Secure Digital
  2. SDHC – Secure Digital High Capacity
  3. SDXC – Secure Digital eXtended Capacity

SDHC & SDXC are the variants that are currently running in most of the Android and Microsoft Phones.

SDHC was one of the variants that was introduced to mobile and portable media industry in the year 2006. The maximum space it could offer was 32 gigs. In 2006, it was an achievement and had worked like a charm. Later, in 2008 SDXC was announced and it could offer, a staggering 2 TB of space on a single SD Card. That was an amazing news although no company was able to build such a card. Currently, the maximum space that can be allocated for storage on a SD card is 256 gigs. So, Samsung lately announced a card with 256 GB called Evo Plus with a price tag of 13,999.00 INR in India. This card has an amazing read and write speeds. The read speed was up to 98 MBps and write speed was almost to 90 MBps, which is substantial for 4K video recording or playback. Although, there are other classes on which cards are divided but I would restrain myself to the things that will make more sense for a customer (layman) to opt any of the best cards out there in the market.
So, initially one should be looking for SDXC for its great performance and storage capacity. The other parameter that influence a buyer is read/write speed. Nowadays, people can get a 32 GB SD card for 200 INR. But what they really lack in is read/write speeds. These are pretty much important. The read/write speeds are classified based on classes. Class 2 being write speed up to 2 MBps guaranteed. So, Class 10 means write speed of 10 MBps, under most conditions. The other variants include class 4 and class 6 apart from the ones mentioned.

Other parameter that influence the write speed is UHS capability. UHS – Ultra High Speed. This include UHS – I and UHS – II. Version I & II again has class 1 and class 3 variants. This allows us to deal with 4K or even 8K videos streaming from card or pc or laptop without any hiccups.
One of the cards that I bought was Samsung’s 256 GB MicroSDXC Evo Plus. This is currently the best card that’s available for personal use. It costs us around 13k in Indian market, Samsung estore. Same price tag is seen in other markets too. The card is supported by my S7 Edge, although S7 Edge doesn’t support adoptable storage which Marshmallow has introduced.
The card is sleek, shiny and has Samsung Original logo on it. It has grooves to fit into a SD card compartment. The card has golden coating at the back, probably that’s where the data transfer will take place. Sometimes, it might look like that it’s a little big investment for such a small product but I'd say it is value for money. I shot a video with 4K settings for a minute (1.3 minutes to be specific) and the file size bloated somewhere to 450 MB with 30 fps and 30 mbps bitrate. The video looked amazing with all the details.


  • The card comes with a SD card adapter which can be used to transfer the data from SD card to computer/laptop.
  • The card is water proof, x-ray proof, safe under magnetic effects and can sustain from -25o C to 60o C of temperature.
  • Buy it if you want a big room for apps, photos and videos.
  • Always be sure of higher read/write speeds.
  • Buy only from retailers who ship genuine products.
  • Ask for invoice and VAT
  • Last but not least always buy higher capacity cards (future proofing)


My conclusion:

  • I have been using this Sammy’s card for over 2 weeks and I haven’t had any hiccups till now. 
  • The card has a limited warranty for 10 years. So, no need to worry.
  • Card really supports a very high speed of data transfer.
  • The card is water proof. Magnetic radiation proof and X-ray proof.
  • Thanks to current UHS technology, the data transfer is lightning fast.
  • Supports 4K recording and playback.
  • Supports most of the new mobile phones out there in the market (post Q3, 2016).
  • The product is very small yet powerful.
The negative points are:
  • Card could have been upgraded to UHS – II version where the data transfer might reach up to 300 MBps.
  • The price of the card could have been reduced.
  • The card doesn’t come with an adapter that supports USB 3.0
  • The card might not work if it’s adoptable stored in mobiles with any PC or Laptop
  • So, choose wisely, better to wait for UHS – II variant. Which might support > 300 MBps data transfer.
 Samsung, Lexar, Sandisk etc are leading manufacturers of SD card around the world. Invest one time and make sure the card is future proof too. Lastly, please make sure that you’ve a right adapter that supports USB 3.0 for faster data transfer from PC/Laptop to card or vice versa.

Thank you for reading this article.

With Love, Peace and Respects. This is Simon.

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