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Yesterday we posted our first ever report on the ADATA Premier Extreme 256GB microSDXC Express Card and it provided us with data transfer speeds over 800MB/s in a card smaller than a dime. This report followed a report we did on the Silicon Motion SM2708 SDXC Express controller some time ago, the same controller found within that microSD Express card. Reviewing both of those articles will provide you with a great background if you are new to SD Express, but today, we are taking things just a step further. This is the Lexar Play Pro 1TB microSDXC Express Memory Card and it simply has to be the smallest and fastest storage medium on the planet right now!
Just to give you an idea of exactly how small this card is, we have placed it on top of a typical SDXC card that one might see in most portable media devices.To its left is the newer CFExpress Type B Card, a typical modern M.2 2280 SSD above, and they are sitting on a 2.5″ SSD which is sitting on a 3.5 inch desktop hard drive.
The main support system of microSDXC Express presently is the newest Nintendo Switch 2 Gaming Console. This card can provide unheard of speeds up to 900MB/s which moves Switch 2 ahead of the previous generation Switch by leaps and bounds. It is available in 256, 512 and 1TB capacities.
The Lexar Play Pro microSDXC Express card uses the SMI SM2708 SD Express controller to provide SD7.1 performance up to 900MB/s via PCIe Gen 3 single lane travel. This is a massive step forward where we will be seeing PCIe Gen 3 speeds up to 1700MB/s (SD7.0) and even Gen4 performance up to 3938MB/s (SD 8.0) soon enough.
Listed performance for the Play Pro is 900MB/s read and 600MB/s write and this card is 4x faster than current UHS-I microSD cards. It is IPX7 waterproof, wearproof, temperature-proof, x-ray-proof, vibration-resistant, magnetic-proof, shockproof, and drop-proof.
To be very clear, Nintendo Switch 2 will only accept microSDXC Express for external storage and a typical UHS microSDXC card will not work, although they will fit. This card comes with a Lexar lifetime warranty.
Checking Amazon, we can find the Lexar Play Pro microSDXC Express Memory Card priced at $58.98 (256GB), $119.99 (512GB) and $219.99 for the 1TB version we are reporting on today!
Lest’s get to some speeds!
i wonder if you could test, a SINGLE file of 900 GB transfer in writing to it, whether then the 600 MB/s would be sustained, or whether after a SLC cache peak speed of perhaps 100 GB transferred, it would radically start drop down to its “standard” 210 MB/s for the rest of the transfer. Akin to Tech Powerup reports (i forgot with what tool one could do this, but maybe you have (or can make) a huge single file, to test it even in the Windows transfer. thanks
You are drawing comparison to one of the best SSDs on the planet, the Samsung 9100 Pro to another NAND flash based product that isn’t remotely in the same category, a newly released MicroSD Express card. We have addressed this same question on several occasions by acknowledging that the beauty of having several reports published ‘net-wide’ is the expanded nature of testing. We are happy with our test regimen and won’t be conducting any further sustained write testing as the sustained write testing conducted on this MicroSD Express card is completely valid. In fact, we might suggest that our ‘sustained write’ testing doesn’t get much better than ACTUAL movement of several complete programs from and back onto the device itself. Thank you for reaching out.