- MicroSD -Card Survey tested 200 models to uncover forgeries, performance and endurance failure
- Fake flash was common in cheap cards with high capacity, discarding data past real boundaries
- Name card generally exceeded models off-brand in speed, reliability and total writing endurance
A man has taken the task of testing MicroSD cards to a level that most users would never entertain.
Over the course of a year, tech enthusiast matt Cole Cole bought 200 different models, ranging from 8 GB to 1 TB, with a special focus on identifying forgeries, testing performance and measuring durability.
Thirty -one of these cards failed during testing.
Writing over 100 TB of data a day
Cole is the creator of The Great MicroSD -Card SurveyA deep, evolving benchmark report (and a serious love work) that began in July 2023.
He built a test rig with eight machines and almost 70 card readers running continuously and writing over 100 TB of data a day.
So far, the setup has written more than 18 petabytes data for the cards under test conditions. Impressive is all his efforts self-financed, though he has an Amazon wish list if anyone wants to buy him further cards to test.
Cole’s goal was to understand how these small storage units are different across fire, price and origin.
One of his main goals is to identify “Fake Flash”, where a card tells the host unit that it has more storage than it really does.
A 1TB card can really only save 8 GB. Once the real limit is reached, new data is quietly lost. He also highlights “Skimpy Flash”, where a map is technically real, but provides less useful space than advertised, a common problem, even among the name-brand card.
His study does not stop at capacity. Cole also tested whether cards live up to their advertised speed class assessments such as U1, U3 or V30.
He ran sequential and random I/O tests, then traced endurance through repeated writing and read cycles.
Some cards survived over 20,000 cycles, while others failed before reaching 500. Temperature monitoring was also part of the process, although it is still unclear how much heat affects long -term performance.
Among the best MicroSD cards was Kingston Canvas GO! Plus 64 GB, PNY Pro Elite Prime 64 GB, SanDisk Extreme 64 GB, Delkin units HyperSpeed 128GB and Samsung Evo Plus 64 GB.
These models worked well across multiple measurements and came close to advertised specifications.
Coles blog includes charts and summaries to help buyers quickly find reliable options, and it is frankly a great job. He’s not done yet. Testing continues unabated with several cards in line, hopefully including some of the largest capacity models.
