Today we are continuing our microSDXC card series with the Samsung Pro Plus 1TB microSDXC card. Flash media cards are an area where the technology has been around for a long time, and folks have had both positive and negative experiences. Some folks swear by Samsung cards, so we wanted to include them, but we could not get a 1.5TB to 2TB card. We are also looking at the newer 180MB/s card as there is a Pro Plus that is a 160MB/s card. It is quite confusing.
Note: We purchased our 1TB card on Amazon (affiliate link.)
The Samsung Pro Plus 1TB microSDXC Card
Since these cards are tiny, we get a lot more packaging than we get device.
Let us quickly get to what this card is. We have V30, A2, and U3 markings. If you need a quick cheat sheet see What All of the Markings on SD microSD and microSDXC Cards Mean. While this is not the highest performing card, it is designed to be higher performing and actually run applications from it, unlike the SanDisk 1.5TB Ultra we looked at previously.
Even though this drive is tiny in size, at 1TB it can store a lot of data. We regularly see PCs equipped with 256GB to 1TB capacity M.2 SSDs which is in this capacity range.
Here is a quick look at the contact side of the card:
Unlike the SanDisk models, we cannot see a package exposed on this side.
Bundled with this card, we get a microSDXC to SD adapter in Samsung’s bright white.
Like the SanDisk Extreme 2TB microSDXC this card is focused on performance so let us get to that next.
Samsung has a definite advantage over PNY: distribution. The PNY is not available on UK Amazon and they don’t even ship to the UK from their US Amazon store.
Vendors should start shipping a flash information file inside the new cards. We could use this info to format them in various ways that would make them more reliable.
On Linux there is F2FS and BTRFS and it would be helpful to know exactly what is going on instead of trying to guess from the exFAT factory format.
You should test SanDisk Extreme A2s, as I’ve found these to be much better than regular Ultra.
Kudos to both PNY and Samsung for making actually decent microSD cards.
Did not find a mention of how many bits per cell are used in the flash memory, nor the rated endurance in TBW. An Amazon review remarked that Samsung’s website had disclaimed the 10 year warranty if this SD card were used in a dashcam, security camera, or other write-intensive use – even though several kinds of cameras are shown on the packaging. There is also a claim of “wearout-proof”, which the fine print says applies to the gold contact fingers having 10,000 ‘swipes’ lifetime. Not a typical failure mode, just like the rest of their ‘-proof’ claims.