Almost SSD in a smartphone: the best class A1 and A2 microSD cards

Kingston's memory card portfolio is dominated by Canvas React drives, while the Canvas Go! represents a compromise between speed and cost. And when this card came to us for tests, it turned out that there was little point in overpaying for an older model.

Kingston microSDXC Canvas Go! Plus with a volume of 64 GB according to the passport gives out 170 and 70 MB / s when reading and writing, and in fact even jumps over the set bar. In the synthetic tests of CrystalDiskMark and ATTO, we got a slight spread in numbers, but in general terms, the real speed of the card turned out to be almost 30% higher than the declared one. And this is already entering the territory of the V90 standard and a reserve for shooting in 8K or 4K with a frame rate of more than 60. The card also has a high IOPS (we are talking about A2 class), so it will successfully serve as a quality backup for the ever-crowded camera phone storage.

The memory card comes with a traditional SD adapter for use in photographic equipment. The card also boasts excellent endurance - we are talking about water resistance, shock resistance, vibration resistance, protection against harmful radiation and a wide range of operating temperatures. Considering that this is one of the most affordable memory cards, which simultaneously corresponds to the A2 and U3 classes, it can be used with equal success both to expand the memory of a smartphone and to shoot nature from a drone somewhere in the Siberian forest. Oh yeah, and it also has a lifetime warranty.

The A1 specification was devised to define the performance of a memory card when dealing with random reads and writes. Speaking of linear speed, we mean how quickly one large file is written to a USB flash drive. In the case of random operations, we are talking about juggling data arrays consisting of a large number of small files. In the case of a smartphone, these are any game cache files, system files, and application data. So, being installed in a smartphone, A-Data Premier demonstrates excellent performance, practically not inferior in speed to the internal memory of the device.

But video shooting in 4K format is not her forte. At this price, it's not surprising. Its linear write speed rests on a rather modest bar of 25 MB / s, so, unlike many relatives, it did not reach the V30 specification, stopping at V10. Technically, such cards are also suitable for shooting at 4K / 60FPS, but in practice you are not immune from crashes during shooting, dropped frames and artifacts caused by a lack of write speed. Therefore, it is better to limit yourself to the classic Full HD. But reading from the card takes place at a standard speed of 100 MB / s, and CrystalDIskMark confirms these figures.

Given that this is one of the most advanced memory cards in the A-Data range, the company has pumped it to the maximum on all fronts. Its body has an increased margin of safety, is not afraid of water, X-rays, shock and vibration.

Transcend positions the 330S card as the optimal solution for use in mobile devices, handheld game consoles, action cameras and drones. It is based on 3D NAND memory with a capacity of 64 GB(options up to 256 GB are available) and meets all modern speed performance classes: A2, V30 and U3.

In real tasks, data is transferred from the drive at a speed of about 100 MB / s, files are written to it at 60 MB / s, which fully corresponds to the declared values. The manufacturer promises random access performance of 2000 IOPS in write mode and 4000 IOPS in read mode. And this is full compliance with the high class A2, which guarantees fast and uninterrupted operation of applications and games installed on the memory card. In tests with the Galaxy S10 camera phone, the card proved to be excellent, deftly handling large application files and game distributions.

Even though this is not a High Endurance model, Transcend places a lot of emphasis on the reliability of its memory card. It remains operational in extreme conditions, not being afraid of water, dust, sudden temperature changes (-25 to +85 degrees), vibrations and X-rays. Also included with the flash drive is a package of proprietary Transcend RecoveRx software for recovering lost data.

Extreme Pro is claimed to comply with C10 General Speed Class, U3 UHS Speed Class, and V30 Video Speed Class. Separately, it is announced that the card meets the requirements of class A2 for working with mobile applications, games, etc. The Extreme Pro description also mentions that this card, along with a linear read speed of 170 MB / s, can offer a linear write speed reaching up to 90 MB/s. As you can see, the prefix Pro in the name is not just there, on paper it is one of the fastest microSD cards.

However, such claims by SanDisk need to be verified (from experience). During practical measurement, it turned out that it does not fully correspond to the declared characteristics. We couldn't get a linear write speed of 170 MB/s. The real figure turned out to be slightly below 100 MB / s, synthetic tests painted a similar picture. And the point here is a little trick, which is mentioned in a small footnote on the company's website: "To get this result, you need a device of the appropriate class." For example, a branded card reader, which you can still find. It turns out the story is like with SSD on the fourth generation PCI-E bus: the speeds are crazy, but there are very few equipment on sale that is ready to support such a speed.

Extreme Pro did not impress with performance in small-block operations either: when writing, performance indicators turned out to be only slightly higher than the requirements determined by the speed class A1. In other words, the characteristics given in the Extreme Pro specification slightly embellish its capabilities. Even though its real performance is not as impressive as on paper, it is still one of the fastest microSD cards on the market. Given the full protection against any adversity and the price, which is much lower than the price tag at the start, we get quite an interesting option for a variety of tasks, whether it is a backup storage in a smartphone or the main memory for an action camera.

The Kingston Canvas React Plus is a professional memory card that can fly at speeds that most other microSD cards can't. The declared performance of Kingston Canvas React Plus is 285 MB / s for reading and 165 MB / s for writing. This is far from the first card with additional contacts on the back side, we tested the SanDisk Extreme Pro V30 A2 model, which promised to get the moon out of the sky, but in reality was just a good and modern memory card. And all because devices with support for the UHS-II bus can hardly be called mass.

Kingston acted shrewdly and put a branded USB card reader with support for the UHS-II bus in the box with the memory card. As far as we can trust the Crystaldiskmark benchmark, paired with the corresponding card reader on the bus, it turned out even more than Kingston promised. The writing speed is especially impressive, we were promised 165 MB / s, we received 232 MB / s. And this is already entering the territory of filming in 8K resolution.

True, when using a regular card reader, the speed will drop by about 2.5 times due to the limitations of the standard bus that full-size SD cards use. Inside the smartphone, she behaves extremely quickly, after all, class A1 obliges. All this makes it a very interesting option for installation in a flagship smartphone a year or two years ago, which has a total internal memory.

The flip side of high performance is heating during intensive use. For example, during testing in tandem with a regular card reader, this couple heated up to 60 - 80 degrees. Tests in AIDA64 say that heating cannot be considered a critical moment and it will not affect the performance of the card in any way, but pulling it out of the laptop immediately after the tests was not easy, it literally burned fingers. Otherwise, this is an elite memory card that can withstand difficult weather conditions, is not afraid of temperature changes and is backed by a lifetime warranty from the manufacturer for the entire period of operation.