Announced back at MWC 2019, SanDisk’s 1TB microSD card is finally available for purchase, in case you’ve been looking for the largest capacity microSD card there is to add to your smartphone or other compatible devices (Nintendo Switch anyone?). But, make no mistake, 1TB of storage in a tiny card isn’t cheap. The new Extreme microSD will cost you more than what you’d pay for Google’s brand new Pixel 3a phone.
I’ve told you how the Pixel 3a phones aren’t a better deal than any iPhone that’s newer than the iPhone 6, and that the newly launched OnePlus 7 makes a lot more sense if you’re in the market for a cheap phone. But at $399.99, the Pixel 3a is probably the top mid-range phone you can get right now if that’s all you desire.
The 1TB microSD card, which doesn’t work on Pixel phones, by the way, costs $449.99, and it’s available to order from various places, including SanDisk’s store, Amazon, and other electronics stores. If you’re shopping at Amazon, you should know that SanDisk’s 400GB microSD card sells for a lot less than it used to cost. All other SanDisk Extreme microSD cards have been on sale for quite a while so you can score 128GB and 256GB versions quite cheaply. Samsung, meanwhile, sells its 512GB microSD card for $99.99, which sounds like an incredible deal by comparison.
Aside from all the storage you want, the card will get you speeds of 160MB/s (read) and 90MB/s (write), which is more than enough to offer a speedy data transfer experience. It’s not SSD-grade territory, but it’s fast nonetheless. The SD Association did announce at MWC a new microSD standard that will push speeds all the way up to 985MB/s, but we’ll have to wait a while for these storage solutions to hit stores.
