Samsung has been selling SD and microSD cards in its PRO Plus lineup in the UHS-I category for several years. We took a closer look at the 2020 lineup a few years back, and for 2021, the company has updated this product line with faster read/write speeds of 160 MBps / 120 MBps. Today, the company is announcing a new update to its lineup with faster read speeds of up to 180 MBps and write speeds of 130 MBps. The new card comes with his V30 video speed class rating, which guarantees a minimum write speed of 30 MBps even under the worst conditions.
On the microSD side, Samsung touts the new card’s A2 application performance class. These cards guarantee a minimum of 4000 random read IOPS and 2000 random write IOPS under all conditions. With more use cases for microSD cards than SD cards in mobile devices, game consoles, drones, action cameras and more, the PRO Plus microSD lineup includes his 512GB SKU for new speeds. The new speed PRO Plus SD lineup reaches 256GB.
| Samsung 2023 PRO Plus SD and microSD lineup | ||||||
| microSD | SD | |||||
| capacity | 512GB | 256GB | 128GB | 256GB | 128GB | 64GB |
| Launch price (card) | $60 | $30 | $19 | $38 | $22 | $13 |
| Launch price (card + reader) | $65 | $38 | $26 | $50 | $30 | – |
| interface | UHS-I | |||||
| SD standard | SDXC | |||||
| performance | 180MBps(Right)/130MBps(Horizontal) | |||||
| speed class | U3, V30, A2, Class 10 | |||||
The company also has select SKUs available with a bundled USB 3.0 card reader. Note that UHS-I officially only supports up to 104 MBps. The speedup seen in the new SKU packages is achieved through proprietary enhancements (other manufacturers such as SanDisk and Lexar have adopted similar strategies). The standard he UHS-I card reader may not be able to capture/write data from the new card at high speed.
The PRO Plus line continues to promise durability – the ability to withstand extreme handling and storage conditions. Combined with a 10-year warranty, Samsung continues to target its pro-his users with updates to its lineup.
