Exciting Developments in Memory Card Technology: Despite the availability of the SD Express performance standard for a while now, memory card makers have only recently started releasing products that meet this standard. These new cards offer unprecedented speeds, which are beneficial for content creators and broadcasters who need to quickly encode high-resolution, high-refresh-rate video. Western Digital is also planning to introduce standard SD cards with multi-terabyte capacities.
At the 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas, Western Digital unveiled several new memory cards that push speed and capacity to new heights. This announcement puts Western Digital alongside Samsung in offering commercially available ultra-portable SD Express storage in 2024.
The SanDisk Extreme UHS-I U3/V30 A2 microSD card, recommended as the top choice for high-speed cards in our SD card buyer’s guide, boasts a read speed of around 200MB/s. However, the newly announced SanDisk SD and microSD Express variants can achieve speeds nearly four and a half times faster. Western Digital’s testing indicates they may reach speeds of up to 900MB/s.
While Western Digital has not disclosed write speeds, the listed performance targets suggest that they could almost double those of a typical SATA SSD. These products are expected to be available to the general public starting this summer, although pricing details are still unknown.
Western Digital plans to offer the Express cards in 128GB and 256GB capacities, as well as introducing the largest UHS-I products to date. While current high-capacity cards max out at 1TB or 1.5TB, WD aims to surpass the 2TB mark for SD and microSD cards this summer, with 4TB models slated for release in 2025.
Although pricing information has not been revealed, 1TB cards typically range from $100 to $200, so products with double or quadruple the storage capacity could cost hundreds of dollars.
For more information, check out our microSD and SD Card Buying Guide – Classes, Performance, What to Buy
Samsung recently announced its first SD Express cards, featuring 800MB/s read speeds and 1GB/s write speeds, with a planned launch later this year. The company also introduced its first 1TB microSD cards, although they are behind the competition in terms of capacity.
The SD Express standard has been around for some time, with the SD Association releasing the SD Express 9.1 specification towards the end of last year. This specification can leverage PCIe 4.0 and NVMe hardware to achieve speeds of up to 2GB/s. However, manufacturers have been slow to adopt the standard as existing products are already capable of handling 4K video.
While use cases and supporting hardware for higher-performance memory cards are somewhat limited at the moment, SD Express could prove valuable for tasks such as 8K video, 120Hz video, and potentially AI applications.
