The Nintendo Switch 2 is here, and that means lots of people will have to buy a new microSD card. While the device comes with 256GB of storage built in, some new games chew up a ton of space. Cyberpunk 2077 is a 60GB download, for instance, while Split Fiction checks in at 69GB. Other titles aren’t nearly as big, but it’s easy to see how you could wind up deleting and redownloading games within a couple months.

When you do want to add room, you’ll need a microSD Express card. The “Express” part is important: These are not the same as the old reliable microSD cards you may have bought for the original Switch or other gaming handhelds — they’re newer, faster and significantly more expensive. They’re also your only choice. If you’re looking for the best microSD card for the Switch 2 today, we’ve broken down what you should know before you buy.

The best microSD cards for the Switch 2 (aren't all that important)

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

The Switch 2 is the first mainstream device to require microSD Express for storage expansion, so there aren’t many options available to buy just yet. Of the handful of compatible models released thus far, we’ve tested six: the SanDisk microSD Express Card (aka the “SanDisk GamePlay microSD Express Card” at Walmart), the Lexar Play Pro, the Samsung microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2, the PNY microSD Express Card, the GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 and the Onn microSD Express Card. The first four are made by genuine storage manufacturers, while the GameStop and Onn cards appear to be rebadged versions of other models. We used the 256GB version of every card except for Lexar Play Pro, which was 1TB.

After timing these microSD Express cards across a range of Switch 2 games, our advice is simple: Get whichever one is in stock for the lowest price in the capacity you want. They aren’t identically fast, especially if you want to move a game to the card from the console’s internal storage (or vice versa). But the differences in load times and overall performance within actual games are tough to notice unless you have a stopwatch handy.

All five cards loaded up the digital version of Mario Kart World, for instance, between 18 and 20 seconds. Each loaded the first Grand Prix race in about 6.5 seconds. Getting to the start screen of Cyberpunk 2077 took about 38 or 39 seconds in each case. Loading a save in a particularly asset-heavy area (Jig-Jig Street) then took between 26 and 29 seconds, depending on the card. (The one exception was with the Onn card, which averaged closer to 31 seconds with that particular task, though that’s also the cheapest choice.)

With Fast Fusion, a smaller native Switch 2 game, the initial load always took six to seven seconds, while each card loaded the first championship race in roughly 4 seconds. It was a similar situation with the Switch 2 upgrade for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (using a Switch 1 cartridge): Each card took just over six seconds to get to the start screen, between 19 and 20 seconds to load a save just before the final boss, about 16 seconds to fast travel between Kakariko Village and Korok Forest, and so on. We saw no significant issues with in-game loads when playing each game, either.

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

All of this suggests that the Switch 2 has a relatively specific target for these cards to hit, and that there may not be much room for one model to leap too far out in front of the others. We’ll also note that the console’s built-in storage was consistently faster than any external option: The gap wasn’t always big, but no card truly outpaced it in any of our tests. Loading that demanding area in Cyberpunk, for example, took about 22.5 seconds on average. So if you want the absolute fastest load times, don’t put your game on a card at all.

If you need the mental comfort of knowing you technically have the best card available, get the SanDisk microSD Express Card. It had no outliers across our many game loading tests, and it was consistently right near the top when it came to moving games to and from system storage, which means it offers strong sequential read and write performance. Benchmark testing on PC with tools like CrystalDiskMark backed this up, as noted in our broader microSD card buying guide.

Putting Mario Kart (a 21.9GB file) on that card took four minutes and 39 seconds on average, which was only second to the Lexar Play Pro by six seconds. It was the fastest to write Fast Fusion (3.5GB), taking an average of 27 seconds across three runs. Only PNY’s card was faster to move games back to the console’s storage, but that one was far slower at writing games to the card — getting Mario Kart on there took seven minutes and 11 seconds on average. Just note that the 128GB version of SanDisk’s card has slower sequential writes than the larger versions, including much slower sustained write speeds (100 MB/s vs 210-220 MB/s). So transferring a game to that particular model will take much longer. The Onn card was also slower to move games back to system storage, taking about 50 seconds more than the SanDisk with Mario Kart and nearly three minutes longer with Cyberpunk

Practically speaking, though, speed differences aren’t as important in this case as having lots of space to hold games at a price you can live with. To make things easy, we’ve listed every Express card we’ve seen at retailers at the time of writing below. Remember: You want microSD Express, not “Extreme,” like the branding SanDisk uses for some conventional microSD cards. A microSD Express card will have a big “EX” logo printed on it.

128GB

• SanDisk microSD Express Card ($64 MSRP)

• PNY microSD Express Card ($45 MSRP)

256GB

• Samsung microSD Express Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($60 MSRP)

• SanDisk microSD Express Card ($70 MSRP)

• Lexar Play Pro ($60 MSRP)

• PNY microSD Express Card ($62 MSRP)

• GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($60 MSRP)

• Onn microSD Express Card ($47 MSRP)

512GB

• SanDisk microSD Express Card ($120 MSRP)

• Lexar Play Pro ($120 MSRP)

• PNY microSD Express Card ($120 MSRP)

• GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($100 MSRP)

• Onn microSD Express Card ($85 MSRP)

1TB

• Lexar Play Pro ($220 MSRP)

• GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($190 MSRP)

Nintendo/Engadget

As you can see, while the SanDisk card is fast, it’s also the most expensive of an already-pricey bunch. Is it worth an extra $10-20 to shave a couple seconds off certain loads in certain games, or a couple minutes when moving a game to external storage? Probably not for most people.

But stock for all of these cards has been a bit patchy since the Switch 2 landed, especially for the Walmart Onn model, which is by far the cheapest choice. If only one card is actually available by the time you read this — and you must have it today — it’s safe to just get it. You won’t lose or gain all that much when it comes to real-world performance.

Ultimately, though, we still advise holding off on buying a microSD Express card for as long as you can. President Trump’s ongoing tariff shenanigans could spike prices a little higher in the short term, but we've only just started to see a few small discounts in recent weeks, and in general, all of these cards should only fall further over time. And compared to traditional microSD options, they are still pricey: The Samsung Pro Plus, for example, costs $17 for 128GB, $27 for 256GB, $50 for 512GB and $95 for 1TB as of this writing.

The Switch 2 is extremely popular, so more microSD Express cards will need to be made and prices will (eventually) come down. Ideally, we’ll see more high-capacity options as well: Nintendo says the Switch 2 technically supports cards up to 2TB, but so far only a couple even go up to 1TB. All of this means you should try to use all 256GB baked into the Switch 2 first, even if it means having to delete a game or two. But if you absolutely need more space right away, the cards above should be fine.

What are microSD Express cards?

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

Most microSD cards are based on a standard called Ultra High Speed (UHS), of which there are three versions: UHS-I, UHS-II and UHS-III. The vast majority of cards you may have bought in the past utilize UHS-I. These have one row of pins in the back and a theoretical maximum data transfer speed of 104 megabytes per second (MB/s). (Though many cards are able to surpass that limit with proprietary tech and card readers.) The original Switch has a UHS-I microSD slot, as do most other gaming handhelds like Valve’s Steam Deck.

UHS-II cards add a second row of pins and can reach up to 312 MB/s. These are pricier and much less common than cards based on UHS-I, but they’re supported by some cameras and higher-power handhelds like the ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X. UHS-III, meanwhile, is twice as fast as UHS-II in theory (624 MB/s), but no microSD cards have actually used it.

UHS-I cards have held on over the years because they’re cheap, widely supported and fast enough for the things most people need them to do: record 4K video, stash photos and so on. But with the Switch 2, Nintendo needs more. The new console is dramatically more powerful, which allows it to run demanding games that may have originally been built for stronger hardware like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X or gaming PCs. The device also uses UFS 3.1 storage internally, which is much speedier than the eMMC storage used by the original Switch. (A custom file decompression engine helps improve load times as well.) So if the Switch 2 is going to accept microSD cards, it needs ones that won’t bring a serious drop-off in performance and can hold up with modern games.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Hence, SD Express. This standard has technically been around since 2018 but mostly went nowhere until the Switch 2 came along. It also uses a second row of pins, but it lets microSD cards take advantage of the PCI Express (PCIe)/NVMe interface, which is the same underlying tech used by modern SSDs. As a result, it can produce considerably faster read and write speeds, with a current theoretical maximum of 985 MB/s.

As noted above, real-world performance won’t be quite that fast. Even if it was, the best microSD Express cards would still be much slower than the NVMe SSDs used by the PS5 and Xbox. (Sony recommends SSDs with sequential read speeds of at least 5,500 MB/s.) And they’ll fall well below their peak speeds under sustained loads: SanDisk, for instance, says sustained write speeds for its 128GB Express card can drop as low as 100 MB/s.

But they’re still a marked improvement over old UHS-I cards, and in theory, they should be quicker than some older SATA-based SSDs when it comes loading game levels, asset streaming, retrieving saves or copying games to external storage. Whereas SanDisk’s microSD Express card can produce sequential read speeds around 900 MB/s, Lexar’s Professional Silver Plus — the top UHS-I pick in our general microSD card guide — topped out just over 200 MB/s, and that’s with a proprietary reader. (On the first Switch, it’d be closer to 100 MB/s.) Sequential writes and random speeds were three to four times better as well, and sometimes even more depending on the benchmark we used.

It remains to be seen how well these Express cards will hold up with years of use, and there’s no way to know exactly when their sky-high prices will drop. Non-Switch 2 devices that support microSD Express are still exceedingly rare, and the standard itself isn’t backwards compatible with UHS-II, so you’ll be limited to UHS-I speeds if you want to use your card with another device (unless you buy a pricey external reader). Still, while the increased costs and limited selection are annoying, the tech itself is worthy of a next-gen Switch.

How we test microSD Express cards

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

We put our microSD Express cards through a series of tests meant to simulate how people would use each card on the Switch 2 in the real world. We mainly worked with four games: a mid-sized title in Mario Kart World, a small one in Fast Fusion, a relatively large one in Cyberpunk 2077 and a hybrid in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which ran off a Switch 1 cartridge but used a roughly 10GB Switch 2 upgrade pack that was downloaded and installed digitally.

We first timed how long it took to move each game from the system’s internal storage to the card in question, and vice versa. We then timed how long it took to load each game when installed to a given card. After that, we measured how quickly the cards could load certain in-game scenarios: the first Grand Prix race in Mario Kart; the first championship race in Fast Fusion; fast traveling between the Jig-Jig Street, Embers and Downtown Central areas in Cyberpunk and fast traveling between the Kakariko Village, Korok Forest and the Hyrule Castle Town Ruins areas in Zelda. (We chose those places in the latter two games because they’re more taxing than other regions.) With Cyberpunk and Zelda, we also timed how long it took to load up different save files in those locations.

With each test, we completed three to five runs to account for any irregularities and marked down the average time taken between them. We did each test in airplane mode, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off, to minimize any performance drain that could arise from background downloads. Between each test, we also spent at least an hour playing the games off each card to ensure there were no significant drop-offs compared to the console’s built-in storage.

Recent updates

November 2025: We’ve tested the 256GB version of Walmart’s Onn microSD Express card and edited our guide accordingly. It’s generally slower than most of the other options we’ve tried, especially when moving games to and from system storage, and in synthetic benchmark tests on a PC. But the performance drop-off isn’t particularly noticeable in actual Switch 2 games, so if you see it in stock and just want to pay as little as possible, it’s a decent buy.

September 2025: We’ve taken another pass through this guide to confirm our advice is still accurate. We’ve also noted a new 512GB version of PNY’s microSD Express card and confirmed that a “SanDisk GamePlay” Express card sold at Walmart has the same performance as the standard SanDisk model we recommend above, just with a different name.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/best-microsd-cards-for-nintendo-switch-2-160052947.html?src=rss

Most microSD cards are fast enough for boosting storage space and making simple file transfers, but some provide a little more value than others. If you’ve got a device that still accepts microSD cards — whether it’s an older gaming handheld, the new Nintendo Switch 2, a dash cam, a drone or an Android tablet — we’ve scoured the market and put close to 20 top contenders through a number of benchmark tests. You can find our recommendations for the best microSD cards below, alongside some general shopping advice worth knowing before you buy.

Table of contents

• Best microSD cards of 2025

• Best microSD Express cards for the Nintendo Switch 2

• Other notable microSD cards

• What to look for in a microSD card

• How we test microSD cards

• Recent updates

Best microSD cards of 2025

Best microSD Express cards for the Nintendo Switch 2

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

Read our full guide to the best microSD Express cards for the Nintendo Switch 2

Let’s be clear about this: Unless you plan to own a Nintendo Switch 2 in the near future, you do not need a high-speed microSD Express card just yet. Nintendo’s gaming handheld is the only popular device that natively supports this standard right now, and microSD Express cards themselves are highly expensive compared to more traditional options.

Still, if you do want to increase a Switch 2’s storage, they’re your only choice. Fortunately, determining exactly which model to buy for the console is pretty straightforward: Get whichever one you can find in stock, in the capacity you want, at a price you can stomach.

We benchmarked several microSD Express cards for a separate Switch 2 guide, and for the most part, the performance differences between them weren’t great enough to justify paying extra for any particular model. Loading times weren’t quite identical with every test we ran, but the cards were extremely close in most games and common scenarios. The few times when there was a notable gap — fast-traveling to a particularly resource-heavy region in Cyberpunk 2077, for instance — the gulf between the slowest and fastest card was only ever about four or five seconds at most. That’s not nothing, but it’s also not something most people are likely to fret over unless they have a stopwatch handy.

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

The only time you’d notice a major speed difference is if you transfer games to your Express card from the Switch 2’s internal storage (and vice versa). In that case, the SanDisk microSD Express Card and Lexar Play Pro were generally the quickest, while PNY’s microSD Express Flash Memory Card had particularly slow write speeds.

Moving Mario Kart World to the SanDisk and Lexar models, for example, took around four minutes and 35 seconds on average; with the PNY card, it took a little over seven minutes. That said, the PNY model was the fastest when it came to moving games back to the system storage. Walmart’s Onn microSD Express Card was significantly slower to move games from the card to system storage, but it’s also the most affordable card we’ve seen by a good distance. Either way, most people aren’t constantly shuffling their games back and forth like this. Performance in actual games is more important, and in that regard the results were consistently much tighter.

What matters most is getting the most space for your budget. Unfortunately, stock for all microSD Express cards has been spotty since the Switch 2’s launch. For your convenience, we’ll list out all of the models we’ve tested thus far and their respective list prices below. Note that some lower-capacity versions — the 128GB SanDisk card, for one — advertise slower speeds than their more spacious counterparts.

• SanDisk microSD Express Card: 128GB ($64), 256GB ($70), 512GB ($120)

• Lexar Play Pro: 256GB ($60), 512GB ($120), 1TB ($220)

• PNY microSD Express Flash Memory Card: 128GB ($45), 256GB ($62), 512GB ($120)

• Samsung microSD Express Card for Nintendo Switch 2: 256GB ($60)

• GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2: 256GB ($60), 512GB ($100), 1TB ($190)

• Walmart Onn microSDXC Express Card: 256GB ($47), 512GB ($85)

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

Broadly speaking, we recommend getting at least 256GB of storage, as Switch 2 games tend to have much larger file sizes than games for Nintendo’s previous handheld. But we also recommend holding off upgrading for as long as you can, if only because all of these cards should (tariff shenanigans aside) come down in price as time goes on.

There’s no point in buying a microSD Express card for anything besides the Switch 2, but we did run the models above through our usual PC benchmarks as well. Unsurprisingly, they are miles faster than any traditional card on the market.

With the 256GB SanDisk card, for instance, sequential read speeds checked in just under 900 MB/s in CrystalDiskMark and ATTO, while sequential writes topped out around 650 MB/s. Sustained writes speeds were slower (around 210 MB/s), but that was still fast enough to move our 12GB test file to the card in 52 seconds on average. It took a mere 20 seconds to read the file back to our PC. The write test with our smaller 1.15GB test folder, meanwhile, averaged just 4.5 seconds.

It all adds up to performance that's at least twice as fast as the best UHS-I models we’ve tested in terms of sequential reads and writes, with three or four times the speeds in some cases. The gulf in random reads and writes is similar, and in some benchmarks even greater. But you need a pricey SD card reader to even see those increases on a PC, so only those with a Switch 2 in hand or serious cash to burn should consider one of these things.

Other notable microSD cards

Samsung Pro Ultimate

The Samsung Pro Ultimate was the closest competitor to the Lexar Professional Silver Plus across our benchmark tests, but it's tangibly worse in terms of sequential write speeds, typically costs more and doesn’t offer a 1TB option. The Samsung Pro Plus is a bit slower for sequential reads, but it’s close enough otherwise and usually easier to find at a lower price.

Lexar Professional Gold

We haven't used it ourselves, but if you’re willing to pay for a more powerful UHS-II card built for heavy-duty video recording, the Lexar Professional Gold has tested well elsewhere and should deliver significantly faster sequential write speeds than our UHS-I picks above. It’s one of the few UHS-II cards we could actually find in stock, but it’s pricey, with a 128GB model normally priced in the $35 to $40 range.

SanDisk Extreme

The SanDisk Extreme effectively matched the Pro Plus in a few of our sequential tests, but that was partly due to us only being able to secure the 256GB model, which is higher-rated than the 128GB version. It’s a fine choice if you see it on sale at a reputable seller, but it’s broadly slower than our top pick and often costs more.

SanDisk GamePlay

The SanDisk GamePlay performs similarly to the SanDisk Extreme but costs a good bit extra as of our latest update. We couldn’t get it to reach its advertised speeds with the company’s own “Pro” card reader or other third-party options, so it fell short of our top picks.

SanDisk Pokémon

The SanDisk Pokémon does outperform its advertised read and write speeds, but not by enough to outpace the Lexar Silver Plus or Samsung Pro Plus. It essentially charges extra for having a picture of Pikachu (or Gengar, or Snorlax) on a product you’ll never look at.

SanDisk Extreme Pro

The SanDisk Extreme Pro is a close analog to the Samsung Pro Ultimate but, as of this writing, is either unavailable at most trusted retailers or priced too high by comparison. The Lexar Professional Silver Plus has faster sequential write speeds as well.

PNY XLR8 Gaming

The PNY XLR8 is an affordable card that comes with up to 512GB of space. Its sequential and random writes speeds checked in a little bit above those of Samsung’s Evo Select, plus it comes with a lifetime warranty. But its sequential reads were much, much slower, putting it out of contention.

PNY Elite-X

The PNY Elite-X often goes for cheap and wasn’t too far off the random read/write performance of Samsung's Pro Plus in CrystalDiskMark. Like the XLR8, it’s also slightly above the Evo Select in write speeds. But its sequential reads were too far behind all of our top picks, and it no longer appears to be available in capacities above 256GB.

What to look for in a microSD card

Capacity

The first thing to figure out when buying a microSD card is how much storage space you need. Modern cards are commonly available in sizes ranging from 32GB to 512GB, with several models now available in 1TB or 1.5TB capacities as well. The first 2TB cards from major brands have started to arrive as well, which is exciting, but those are still fairly rare (and very expensive) by comparison.

For many, a 128GB or 256GB model should be a sweet spot between price and storage space. But if you need more room — say, for stashing a bunch of games on a Steam Deck — a 512GB card or greater could make more sense and often provides a better cost-per-GB ratio. These days, you can find a decent 128GB card for around $15, a good 256GB card for less than $30 and a solid 512GB card for around $40 (with faster models priced a little higher). There’s a starker increase when you go up to 1TB cards, which often cost closer to $100, though we’ve seen some fall into the $70 to $80 range more frequently over the last year. The first 2TB cards are a bigger leap: the 2TB SanDisk Extreme, for example, now has a list price around $200, which is down a bit from its original MSRP but still far from cheap.

Note that a microSD card’s performance may differ depending on what capacity you buy. SanDisk says its 128GB Extreme card delivers sequential write speeds up to 90 MB/s, for example, while the higher-capacity models in the same line offer up to 130 MB/s.

When we talk about microSD cards today, we mostly refer to cards that use the microSDXC (eXtended Capacity) standard, which have a capacity between 32GB and 2TB. Your device needs to support this for it to work with a microSDXC card. This will almost never be an issue these days, but some older devices (a Nintendo 3DS, for instance) are only compatible with microSDHC (High Capacity) cards, which range from 2GB to 32GB.

Read and write speeds

MicroSD cards are primarily judged on their read and write speeds, which are usually measured in megabytes per second (MB/s). Generally, most microSD cards have faster read speeds than write speeds.

These metrics can then be broken down into sequential and random performance. Sequential read and write speeds matter when you’re trying to access (read) or save (write) long, constant streams of data, such as opening a large video or copying a big batch of files from a PC. If you want to use a microSD card for media storage, this is particularly important. Random performance, meanwhile, is about how quickly a card can read and write small files scattered throughout the device.

Since random read/write speeds are much lower than sequential ones, storage device makers tend not to advertise them as loudly. But they’re important if you use a card with a gaming device or a single-board computer like the Raspberry Pi, where it often has to rapidly save and access small bits of data in random locations.

Speed ratings

If you look at a microSD card, you’ll see a buffet of numbers, letters and symbols. Most of these refer to the card’s speed class and performance ratings, which are determined by the SD Association.

A card’s Video Speed Class, or V-rating, details its minimum sequential write speed, which is especially important when recording video from a camera. It ranges from V6 to V90. Most of the cards we tested had a V30 rating, so they have a sequential write speed of at least 30 MB/s. This should be enough to support up to 4K video at lower bitrates. Higher-rated V60 and V90 cards are usually better for capturing 8K, but they come at a much higher cost.

The UHS Speed Class, or U-rating, also refers to a card’s minimum sequential write speed. It comes in two varieties: U3, which mandates a minimum of 30 MB/s, and U1, which is rated for 10 MB/s.

The older Speed Class rating overlaps with the other two systems. It’s signified by a C symbol and goes from Class 2 to Class 10, with the number (again) indicating minimum sequential write speed. This rating is less relevant nowadays, but you may still see a “C10” logo on some cards.

The Application Performance spec, marked by an A symbol, is an indicator of random read/write speeds. This is measured in IOPS, or input/output operations per second, rather than MB/s. There are two categories here: A1 cards offer a minimum random read speed of 1,500 IOPS and a minimum random write speed of 500 IOPS, while A2 cards bump those up to 4,000 IOPS and 2,000 IOPS, respectively. Both ratings also guarantee sequential write speeds of at least 10 MB/s.

To keep it simple, most people should look for a card with V30, U3 and A2 ratings. It’s totally possible to get a solid card without those: A U1 card might be worth it if you just need a cheap, high-capacity option, for example. V60 and V90 cards are worth a look if you’re serious about shooting high-resolution photos and video as well. But overall, cards with the certifications above should provide the best blend of price and performance today.

It’s important to emphasize that these ratings are baselines. Most V30 cards offer significantly higher write speeds than 30 MB/s, for instance, and some A1 cards can outperform some A2 models in practice. The speeds advertised by manufacturers aren’t always 100 percent accurate, either: Sometimes the card will be slower in real-world use, other times it may actually be a bit faster.

Samsung

UHS bus speeds

The other spec to note is the card’s bus interface. Most microSD cards available today are UHS-I, which has a theoretical maximum speed of 104 MB/s. There are also UHS-II cards, which have an extra row of pins on the back and can reach up to 312 MB/s. (A UHS-III standard technically exists as well but hasn’t seen wide adoption.) These are labeled on the card with a Roman numeral I or II.

UHS-II cards are typically the ones with those higher V60 or V90 ratings. If you shoot lots of 4K to 8K video or frequently use burst mode to capture ultra high-res photos, the performance gains of a good UHS-II card can save you time.

However, these are typically much more expensive than UHS-I cards: This 128GB Lexar Professional Gold model, for instance, is a relative bargain at $35. While that's less than many UHS-II models we’ve seen in the past, it's still more than double the common street price of our top pick above. You need a device that’s compatible with the UHS-II interface to see any benefits, too, and stock for UHS-II cards is often spottier. For now, the higher speeds aren’t worth the price premium for most people, so we stuck mostly to UHS-I cards with our recommendations.

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

microSD Express and the Nintendo Switch 2

The absolute fastest microSD cards you can buy, however, are based on a different interface called SD Express. This has technically been around for several years and now includes its own subset of speed classes, but the gist is that it's much faster than UHS-I or UHS-II: SanDisk’s recently released microSD Express card, one of the first commercially available models, advertises sequential read speeds up to 880MB/s. That’s quicker than some older SSDs.

It’s a substantial upgrade that has largely held up in our testing, but very few popular devices natively support SD Express today. The first major exception is the Nintendo Switch 2, which is only compatible with the newer standard, as it’s needed to keep up with the performance demands of new handheld games.

Besides SanDisk, manufacturers like Samsung, Lexar and PNY have already launched microSD Express cards to go with the console. The presumption is that having such a popular device embrace the tech will only further its adoption and drive prices down.

But it’s still early days, and right now all microSD Express cards cost much more than the best UHS-I or even UHS-II options. Beyond the Switch 2, it’s possible to take advantage of these cards’ superior speeds with a dedicated SD Express card reader, but that adds even more to the final cost. It’s also worth noting that SD Express cards are not backwards compatible with UHS-II (or UHS-III), so if you try to plug one into a device with a UHS-II slot, it’ll be limited to UHS-I speeds. Still, they’re a must for Nintendo fans going forward, and the tech should have plenty of appeal if more gadgets that support the interface do arrive. 

For more on how the first wave of Express cards perform on the Switch 2, we've put together a dedicated buying guide just for Nintendo's console. 

A note on card readers and reaching advertised speeds

While the UHS-I interface has a theoretical maximum of 104 MB/s, some UHS-I cards can exceed that speed through proprietary extensions. However, you need a compatible card reader and host device to take advantage of that extra performance. If you find a UHS-I card advertising speeds higher than 104 MB/s, this is what’s going on. You can see these limits in action with an original Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck: Both of those gaming devices support the UHS-I interface but don’t go beyond its official speed, flattening any sequential gains some cards may have elsewhere. (Differences in random read and write speeds can still matter, though.) The same thing will happen if you plug a more powerful UHS-II or SD Express card into a device that doesn’t accept those interfaces.

The takeaway: Your microSD card will only be as fast as the slowest link in your chain.

Warranty

Many microSD cards are designed to be durable, with protection from water, extreme temperatures, X-rays and drops. Still, in case of catastrophe, a long warranty is always good to have. Many manufacturers offer lifetime or 10-year limited warranties, though we’ve noticed that “endurance” cards marketed to withstand more hours of writing are usually covered for a shorter period of time. For example, Samsung's Pro Endurance, a model aimed at security cameras and other monitoring devices, comes with a five-year warranty.

Avoiding counterfeits

The memory card market has had a particular problem with scammers selling fake products. To guard against this, only buy from a known brand and a reputable retailer such as Best Buy, B&H Photo or Adorama. If you shop at Amazon, only buy if the shipper and seller is Amazon.com. (That said, a handful of users have reported receiving counterfeits even from Amazon directly in the past, so exercise caution.) Remember: If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is. Be wary of any retailer offering a significantly lower price than everyone else.

Once you receive a card, check its packaging for any irregularities. You can run benchmark tests like CrystalDiskMark or BlackMagic Disk Speed Test to verify its speeds aren’t drastically lower than what’s advertised (or possible, given its specs). You can also use software that’s designed to verify the true capacity and performance of your card, such as H2testw and FakeFlashTest.

Jeff Dunn for Engadget

How we test microSD cards

We've put about 20 microSD cards through a series of tests to verify their sequential and random performance. These included benchmarks like CrystalDiskMark, BlackMagic Disk Speed Test, ATTO Disk Benchmark and AJA System Test, as well as a few “real-world” tests. We copied and pasted a small folder of photos about 1.15GB in size to and from each card, then did the same with a larger 12.2GB folder containing multiple file types and subfolders, timing the process each time. We also checked how each card performed on the Steam Deck, downloading games of varying sizes — including Stardew Valley, Aperture Desk Job, Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Apex Legends — then timing how long it took to launch each game and load save files. We do multiple runs of each test to verify our findings and account for potential outliers. 

Where applicable, we used a Kingston USB 3.2 UHS-II reader to test each card on both Windows 11 and macOS Sequoia. However, if a card could be bundled with (or is specifically advertised to use) a proprietary reader, we mainly tested with that, since we figure that’s the one most interested buyers will end up using. For Windows testing, we used an Alienware gaming PC with an Intel Core i9-10900F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU, 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. For macOS, we used a 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro with an Apple M1 Pro chip, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. If a reader couldn’t connect over USB-C, we used CalDigit’s TS4 dock to test the corresponding card on the MacBook.

We tested the 128GB version of each card whenever we could, though we were only able to test higher-capacity models for a few options. We also reformatted each card before testing with the SD Association’s Memory Card Formatter tool.

For microSD Express cards, we ran each model through a series of tests specific to the Switch 2, since that is the only popular device that actually supports the tech. You can read more about that process in our separate buying guide linked above.

Recent updates

November 2025: We’ve tested Walmart’s Onn microSD Express Card and edited our notes on the best cards for the Nintendo Switch 2 accordingly.

September 2025: We’ve fleshed out our advice on buying a microSD Express card for the Nintendo Switch 2. 

May 2025: We’ve updated this guide to ensure our advice is accurate and to reflect the new Nintendo Switch 2’s use of microSD Express cards. We’ve also added testing notes for the Lexar Play Pro microSD Express card and the more standard PNY XLR8. We’ve removed mentions of a few cards that have seemingly been discontinued, including the original Kingston Canvas Go Plus, the Lexar Professional 1066x and the 2021 Samsung Evo Select. We plan to test more new microSD Express cards for a future update.

February 2025: We’ve updated this guide with a new top pick: the Lexar Professional Silver Plus. The Samsung Pro Plus, our previous recommendation, stays as a runner-up. We’ve also added SanDisk’s recently released microSD Express card as a pick for those who want the absolute fastest card possible, albeit with heavy caveats. This is one of the first microSD cards to use the SD Express bus interface, so we’ve included more details on what that entails in our “what to look for in a microSD card” section. Lastly, we’ve removed our write-up for SanDisk’s Apex Legends card, as it appears to have been discontinued, and included testing notes for a couple of the company’s more recent releases.

November 2024: We've checked back with this guide to ensure our recommendations are still accurate and made light edits for clarity. 

August 2024: We’ve updated this guide to note the recently released 1TB models for three of our top picks: the Samsung Pro Plus, the Kingston Canvas Go Plus and the Samsung Evo Select. We’ve also made sure all pricing details are as up to date as they can be. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/accessories/best-microsd-card-130038282.html?src=rss