When the Switch was first announced, it was stated that the system had the capability to use microSD cards up to 1TB. Which was amazing at the time as 1TB microSD cards simply didn’t exist then. Heck, we barely started seeing 400 microSD cards being produced. Well, get to smash open that piggy back, as the future is here and it’s going to cost you.
In a recent post by the Verge, two of non-existent cards are now in production from two companies, Western Digitial’s SanDisk and Micron. Both of which are well-known names when it comes to flash storage. Both are UHS-I microSDXC rated, meaning both cards will offer read speeds up to 100MB/S. For the non-technical, it means anything placed on those cards will load extremely fast.
According to SanDisk, their 1TB offering will boost read speeds up to 160MB/S, while Micron’s microSD card will peak at 100MB/S, supposedly. However, Microcon’s 1TB card will provide faster write speeds, at 95MB/S. Seeing how the write speeds are still much higher, I’m inclined to gravitate towards the Sandisk storage.
So what can you do with 1TB of microSD storage? Actually, there’s quite a bit of stuff you can do with that. For starters, that’s up to 40 hours of 4K HDR video. 200 5GB 1080p movies or 200,000 songs/ 17,000 hours of music. Or you could just stuff one into your new Samsung Galaxy S10 or Nintendo Switch and not worry about storage issues for a long time.
Just don’t expect them to be cheap. Currently 512GB microSD cards, such as those sold by Samsung and PNY already retail between $199 to $300 dollars. So one would imagine that double the storage would equate to double the price. Which is what we’re looking at now. According to provided information from SanDisk, expect to pay $450 for their microSD card when it’s available this April 2019. As for Micron, they haven’t provided a price but did mention that their microSD card will be available in Q2 2019.
In addition to the 1TB microSD, SanDisk is also releasing a much cheaper 512GB microSD card priced at $199.99.
Source: The Verge
