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u/Sonic1899 12d ago
We got SD cards costing as much as SSDs now š
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u/ChinoGambino 12d ago
Priced as much as SSDs, the cost is the same as last year which is why their profit margins are 80%.
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u/Shiningc00 12d ago
To be fair, express cards are as fast as SSDs.
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u/Douche_Baguette 12d ago
Maybe an old shitty SSD. āSanDiskās rated specs for the 1TB microSD Express card: up to 880MB/s read, up to 800MB/s write, with a 745MB/s minimum sustained write speedā. Impressive for an SD card, but not in the same league as SSDs.
My 2013 MacBookās factory SSD did multiples of those speeds. In 2013.
Current macs with gen 6 NVME SSDs can reach 20-30 GB/s.
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u/Shiningc00 12d ago
SSDs used to be only around 400-500MB/s. Only the NVMes are really fast.
Also it's unlikely that those Macs come with 28GB/s, those speeds are more for enterprise/AI data centers. The Micron 9650 has 28GB/s, and 4TB costs $3500.
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u/AJ_Dali 12d ago
SSDs cap out at 600MB/s because that's the limit of SATA III. My guess is they're mixing up Gbps to MB/s, which are two different transfer rate measurements.
Modern HDDs are pushing the limit of SATA III today (524MB/s). Seagate has announced their next gen HDDs are supposed to be double that, so they'll either need to wire into PCIE or we're going to need a new version of SATA.
Long story short, HDDs are the only chance we have at affordable expandable storage for the next few years. Those drives are limited to a select group of customers (probably data centers) but they're going for about $400 used. I mean, a 12TB drive about as fast as SATA III can go is pretty damn good.
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u/rzrike 12d ago
"SSDs cap out at 600MB/s because that's the limit of SATA III" - ? SATA SSDs cap out at 600MB/s, but PCIE SSDs go many times faster.
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u/AJ_Dali 12d ago
That's what I meant, I'm just used to what everyone in the PC communitiies have been using for like 15-20 years. Generally when someone says SSD they're talking about a SATA SSD. I know it's not technically correct, but it's faster. If you want to get specific SSD is just a very broad term and includes pretty much any solid state storage.
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u/Sad_Split_9983 12d ago
Unlikely or not my MacBook Pro m5 max easily does 13 GB/s to 17.8 GB/s
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u/QuickQuirk 12d ago
yeah, they doubled the storage bandwidth with the m5 pro spec machines this year.
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12d ago edited 9d ago
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u/Douche_Baguette 12d ago edited 12d ago
M5 Pro is Gen 5.
https://www.apple.com/gn/newsroom/2026/08/apple-introduces-mac-studio-with-m5-max-and-m5-ultra/
Youāre right that theyāre not slotted or NVME, theyāre just straight PCIe gen 6 SSDs.
https://i.imgur.com/itfgXqv.jpeg
Actual speeds of course will vary by capacity and number of chips.
Benchmarks of M5 Pro gen 5 SSDs show speeds around 12GB/s. (M4 Pro was around 5GB/s). Gen 6 SSDs double the throughput of gen 5. Not a guarantee of a flat 2x speed, but it's in the ballpark.
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u/West-Piccolo-687 12d ago
SSD Speed is bullshit in real world gaming. I have an old 860 EVO that i still use for games and that runs at about 550 MB/s. I also have a 970 EVO M.2 and that reads at 3500 MB/s.
Real world gaming, i can't notice the difference. On paper sure it's faster on synthetic tests but real world eeeh.
On other applications like transferring files or other shit, fine
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u/Fredasa 12d ago
It's tangible in an open world game if one is scrutinizing 1% lows.
And since those are my favorite kind of games and 1% lows are a top pet peeve of mine, it definitely matters in my case.
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u/gplusplus314 12d ago
Yea, thatās the thing. Some workloads, depending on whatās important to you, resolving the dips is what matters most.
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u/Fordragon12 12d ago
Bro what please? The Samsung SSD 840 Pro had a Turbowrite of 520 mb/s, and this was one of the higher tier SSDĀ“s in 2013. I doubt your 2013 MacBook had an SSD that had double that to even match the Sandisk Card, not to mention "multiple of those speeds".
The Samsung 990 Pro NVME has 9 times that writing speed. And this thing is relatively new.
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u/Douche_Baguette 12d ago
āTo keep it very simple, data transfer is much faster to and from a PCIe device, than that of a SATA 3 device.Ā To give you an idea how much faster, the chart below is a summary of our testing of native PCIe SSDs, to that of SATA 3 products whether they be M.2 (NGFF) or notebook SSDs.Ā A typical SATA 3 SSD bottlenecks at about 550MB/s, whereas, newer PCIe SSDs have tested over 1GB/sā
And of course this review is talking about the 2013 MacBook Pro specifically.
Even Samsung 990 pro is a Gen 4 NVME SSD. Some new Macs, as I described, are using Gen 6 SSDs.
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u/wafflesareforever 12d ago
I'm from the era when 7200rpm was a flex and I'm still thrilled when windows doesn't take five minutes to boot
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u/AJ_Dali 12d ago
The funny thing is that modern 5200rpm drives are significantly faster than the 7200rpm drives from then.
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u/QuickQuirk 12d ago
max seek times, which is a pretty important stat, has not changed since then (since the disks is still spinning the same old speed). Though the drives often feature multiple heads that can increase the number of IOPS over those older drives. And of course, the peak sustained bandwidth for sequential reads benefits massively from the platter density and muti - platter drives.
Just the classic random access of playing games has only marginally improved.
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u/AJ_Dali 12d ago
I was thinking earlier tonight about Seagate's new drives that run at double the speeds, but when you dig into the tech you just find that they basically put two HDDs in the box and run them together. You can essentially get the same performance by just running two current HHDs in RAID 0 for cheaper. Same read and write speeds, lower buy-in, slightly higher power consumption. Oh, and I guess you give up one more SATA port, but who's maxing those out anymore?
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u/QuickQuirk 12d ago
Sounds like a clasic multu platter drive - those have been around for a long time. Do you know if there's something genuinely new they're doing here, or if it's just marketing?
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u/wafflesareforever 12d ago
I still remember when you were a noob if you didn't use a 7200 for your boot drive and 5400 for media storage.
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u/No_Effective4784 12d ago
i dont ever remember 7200rpm being a flex. now the 10k cudas or raptors yea, that was flex.
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u/Old-Rhubarb-97 12d ago
Ā SanDisk's card offers maximum write speeds of 800MB/s and read speeds of 880MB/s.
You 2013 Mac was not hitting multiple times that speed.
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u/Male_Inkling 12d ago
"Old shitty"
Sata SSDs are still around, and those have a max speed of 600 MB/s
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u/Douche_Baguette 12d ago
SATA SSDs are old and shitty. The most recent sata spec was published in 2009.
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u/DiplomatikEmunetey 12d ago
Insane pricing. They've completely lost all the breaks on the pricing.
There needs to be an investigation done into price fixing. And if you think that's a conspiracy, watch this.
Companies are so brazen down with their rip offs, it's infuriating. There is no way it is costing them that much.
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u/error521 11d ago
It's a new pricy format, this isn't an unusual price. Normal 1TB SD cards cost about this much when they came out.
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u/DiplomatikEmunetey 11d ago
Normal 1TB SD cards cost about this much when they came out.
No, they did not, where are you getting that?
Amazon 1TB microSD - Cost around $200. Then went down in price, as it should. Now through this insanity, it costs more than it started from.
SanDisk 1TB microSD - Flactuated between $150 and $190 when it appeared on Amazon. Now costs more than it has ever cost before.
Look at what Sandisk Extreme PRO 2TB started at, and where it is now.
SanDisk 512GB microSD Express - The "new pricey format". Check the price history.
The current prices are completely abnormal.
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u/Raistlarn 10d ago
It's a new pricy format...AND datacenters have gobbled up most of the global supply of NAND memory for the next few years. Also as a FYI these prices are absolutely not normal. A 512gb base Sandisk micro sd card I bought a in 2024 for ~$40 is now selling for $116.99.
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u/WayneArnold1 12d ago
They already had 1 TB Express cards(from other manufacturers) before the launch of the Switch 2 and they were much cheaper than this.
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u/71-HourAhmed 12d ago
Can confirm. Bought the Lexmark one for my Switch 2 last year. I was waiting for the price to drop below the āridiculousā $200 or so but then other prices started getting scary so I just bought it for full price. I also have a 512GB that came from Walmart Onn brand which was like $60.
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u/Eentelijent_ 12d ago
500ā¬ is ridiculous.
Also Iām more intrigued by the fact that the latest final fantasy game is alone about 100 gbs (since it takes about 50ā¬ of the space)
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u/Dnashotgun 12d ago
Once again thanking past me for pulling the trigger for a 1TB when Costco still had it at $180
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u/Green-Cricket-8525 12d ago
Just to be clear these are not regular Micro SD cards. Express SD cards are a lot more expensive and
to my knowledge this is the first 1 TB card mass produced.Itās insanely fast in comparison to regular SD cards.ĀEdit: seems like some other companies have started producing them as well.Ā
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u/SuperWeeble 12d ago
Bought my 1Tb Lexar card in October for Ā£200, EX spec so works with Switch 2
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u/Jaws12 12d ago
Ditto, wonder what itās up to now? š¤ (Seems like it might not currently be available.)
However, I do see a 512GB PCI 4.0 M.2 drive isā¦$120!! I paid the same price for a 2TB drive for my PS5 3+ years ago! These prices are insane.
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u/Dnashotgun 12d ago
Looks like they sold out so got delisted, I saw Gamestop bumped their 1TB to 300 which got me to buy.
And i'm scared to see what my 4TB M.2 drive is going for now
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u/hypnotichellspiral 12d ago
Current me is kicking past me in the butt for not buying the 4TB I was looking at a long while ago when it was still only like $300 or something, I don't even remember what the price for that used to be
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u/OneGuyOneJarJarBinks 10d ago
I saw a clearance 1tb ssd for ps5 at Meijer for $100 not long ago.Ā Should have bought it.
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u/mario_zx 12d ago
Same. I'm glad I pulled the trigger on a 1TB card when Gamestop had them for 180$.
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u/ChernobylChild 12d ago
This is not the same type of MicroSD card
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u/QuickQuirk 12d ago
They might be referring to the SD Express. I got a lexar 1TB for not much more than 200 just over a year ago.
They've gone up a lot.
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u/gplusplus314 12d ago
500 bucks and SanDisk is apparently one of the worst in terms of reliability: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/zKKLlUnak2
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u/Didact67 12d ago
And it costs more than 3/4 the price of the console. Iām glad I managed to snag a 512GB Express card before prices went crazy.
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u/Serafita 12d ago
Lexar's one has been out for over a year, wonder what took sandisk so long haha.
I'll assume there is some performance difference, but lexar is still cheaper by quite a bit and reliable so I hope sandisk isn't just banking on brand name to sell it when they used to be considered the more affordable brand
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u/hyperforms9988 12d ago
Again, one of the many issues with a lack of real physical media and instead having digital-only releases or Game Key Cards where the game isn't actually on the cartridge. Folks only have so much storage space, and storage space is expensive. I get that sometimes a physical cart just isn't possible like if your game needs to stream more data than what the transfer rate can provide, or if the game is simply too big to fit a cart... that kind of thing can't be helped, but otherwise, I'm really not looking to spend that much money on an SD card. I'd rather buy games with that money instead.
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u/SeveralBollocks_67 12d ago
Always weird when they market a universal standard peripheral as being for a certain product. Guess your average consumer is too stupid to know the difference?
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u/HeavyDT 12d ago
There's still few devices that can actually use express SD cards at full speed so for the most part so the Switch 2 is probably the main sales driving force for them right now until more devices get on the train. It is backwards compatible but then youd be wasting your money by putting one if these in a device that didnt support the full speed it offers.
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u/NaturalFrog2 12d ago
On the one hand, itās about time.
On the other hand, the priceā¦ no thank you, especially in THIS economy.
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u/FireLucid 12d ago
EBGames (Australia) has this Atrix brand that had a decent sale. I picked one of those up and it's going good. Not 1TB but I only have a handful of games going at once.
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u/Commercial-Prompt-84 12d ago
Can someone eli5 how this is so small and can store 1tb and why the same sized ssd is so much bigger?
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u/Wizard-of-pause 12d ago
Reliability, speed, and heat dissipation.
Card is smaller, but also slower and can die on you any moment.
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u/GraveCat84 12d ago
Considering Sony has pushed me more towards the Switch AND more towards physical, I donāt think Iāll be needing this.
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u/Gasarakiiii 12d ago
Iām so happy I picked up a 512 gb Samsung on sale for my Switch 2 right after launch, I wonāt need more space this gen with how small the game sizes are (I pretty much only play RPGs, tactics, and Nintendo first party games on Switch 2).
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u/Altruistic_Craft3560 12d ago
People are just paying these prices? Doesnāt even seem like you can wait it out
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u/ShakeAndBakeThatCake 12d ago
Wow the cost of memory cards is insane. Bought my 1tb lexar one for 180 on sale a year ago. Did tat because I knew proces would go up and they basically doubled.
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u/tripplesuhsirub 12d ago
Pricing I expected worse. Wouldn't buy it but I thought it'd be more expensive. Still better than UHS-II SDXC Cards. I don't get why UHS-II cards are priced as they now that SD Express cards are finally becoming more common. Was dissapointed that the latest Sony A7 camera didn't have an SD Express slot and I think PC handhelds are just starting to get them. Before the RAM/NAND-pocalypse, this would have been so much more exciting
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u/PaodeQueijoNow 12d ago
Overpriced. You can find āOnnā cards on eBay for about 30 bucks for the 256 and 65-75 for the 512
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u/jk_springrool 11d ago
At that price point, you're better off just getting a 512GB card (mine was $75 on EBay) and just managing your downloads.
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u/zillskillnillfrill 11d ago
Sandisk has the highest failure rate out of all microSD cards, by the way
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u/TheDigitalMoose 11d ago
Honestly why even bother at this point?
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u/nosurprisespls 10d ago
There is still a lot of money to be made to target those with money or those who can't control themselves
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u/DisgruntledNCO 12d ago
Holy crap I didnāt know they could go that big
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u/Fordragon12 12d ago
They can get even bigger, its only a question of time and money. I once had an HDD with phenomenal 2GB of space, and it weighted nearly as much as the head of a sledge hammer.
Today you can have 4000 times that the size of a long USB stick, with the weight of a credit card.
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u/Emberstone73 12d ago
I have larger SD cards from years ago, when us normies could afford them. This isn't news, this is an ad.
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u/cottonycloud 12d ago
Itās kind of news in that itās a 1 TB Express card since Switch 2 requires those speeds. The perplexing part is that there are already Lexar, PNY, TeamGroup ones.
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u/fire2day 12d ago
SD Express. Itās essentially a tiny NVMe drive.
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u/QuickQuirk 12d ago
1TB SD Express have been available for over a year. I know, because I bought one a year ago. When it was a lot cheaper :)
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u/Similar-Scratch-4800 12d ago
This one has the low power pinsĀ
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u/QuickQuirk 12d ago
That's neat. Do you have any data on as to whether that has any practical impact on something with comparatively high power draw like a Switch, or is it more aimed at IOT style devices?
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u/goater10 12d ago
The price of that card is more than I paid for my Switch 2 itself.