Help choosing a micro SDcard.

MustacheBerry

MustacheBerry

MustacheBerry

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13 Jul 2019
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Hey guys, the micro SD card I've been using in my Galaxy S7 died a while ago(and turned out to be a chinese fake while at it...) and I'm about to buy a new one, but since I don't really keep up with the market I don't know wich one to pick so I'm looking for some help.

I've rounded it down to these 3 models, I'm looking at 32gb either Samsung Evo+(10£), SanDisc Ultra(13£) or SanDisc Extreme(20£) and I can't figure out if there are any meaningful differences here worth paying extra for. Extreme has a 30 year guarantee, I guess that'd be a good sign for its endurance? I'd really appreciate any advice you can spare, thanks in advance.
 
Really, when it comes to SD Cards - I buy the cheapest "known brand" from a reputable retailer.
If you plan on shooting movies in UHD then you'll want a U3 rated card, otherwise U1 will be fine.
My last SD Card purchase, for my wife's new tablet, was a 128GB Samsung Evo U3 - £20 to the door.
 
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I always use SanDisk Extreme Pro cards in all my phones and cameras. They generally have the fastest transfer speeds of ~90Mb read and write. The EVO are decent as well but which ever one you get do a benchmark on them using something like CrystalDiskMark to check the write speeds against the advertised amounts. There are so many great fakes around that this is often the only way to tell.
 
stoofa said:
If you plan on shooting movies in UHD then you'll want a U3 rated card, otherwise U1 will be fine.
My last SD Card purchase, for my wife's new tablet, was a 128GB Samsung Evo U3 - £20 to the door.
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I don't think I recorder a single video in the 3 or so years I had this phone, but thanks I'll keep that in mind.:) Also would you mind sharing where you got your card from? Tho that price seems too good to be true, wouldn't want to end up with another fake.

MartinPrince said:
The EVO are decent as well but which ever one you get do a benchmark on them using something like CrystalDiskMark to check the write speeds against the advertised amounts. There are so many great fakes around that this is often the only way to tell.
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Absolutely will do. I bought the last one from a big and, seemingly, legitimate chain store here in the UK and the price was pretty standard, it didn't even cross my mind it could be a fake but I'll definitelly be more vigilant now.

hyperseven said:
Been using Integrals A1 U3 256GB from memory that is mine ;) Usually go down to £23-25.
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Thanks but while it may be stupid of me, I'd rather stick with the mainstream brands, plus from what I see the read speeds on those is half whant they are on Samsungs and SanDiscs while the prices here are about the same, 2-3 pounds diference. Also thats a really good price for 256, at Curry's 64Gb costs 22 pounds allready and that's the biggest one they have and I would really rather not dip into Ebay for this one.

kefan77 said:
with such prices and such usecase, Samsung.
buy 64GB min though.
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I just don't think I'll need that much space, in the last 3 or so years I've filled up >7 GB and 64s for the most part cost(shockingly) twice as much . I should've mentioned that earlier, but I really only use the phone for listening to music, audiobooks, some videos and internet. No games or full movies or anything demanding like that.

And of course, thanks everyone for your input.:)
 
Hey guys, one more question. I don't have a micro sd card slot/reader for my pc, is it possible to speed test a card by connecting a phone with the card in it to the pc and then running software on in that way?
 
Personally I've found Kingston the most reliable so far - though I find their SD cards more suited to sustained data transfers and video capture than photography where SanDisk have more specialised cards that can handle high burst transfer rates better. (Though Kingston have now released the Canvas React range which is probably a response to that).

My experience with SanDisk hasn't been inspiring for long term reliability actually - the few I've used and a good few people I know have found they stop working after 2-3 years while other brands still seem to work OK over the same time. I've not done any testing to be sure but anecdotally SanDisk ones seem to get much hotter doing the same work which might be why.

Don't have much experience with Samsung's SD cards personally but they seem to be reasonably good.
 
Rroff said:
Personally I've found Kingston the most reliable so far - though I find their SD cards more suited to sustained data transfers and video capture than photography where SanDisk have more specialised cards that can handle high burst transfer rates better. (Though Kingston have now released the Canvas React range which is probably a response to that).

My experience with SanDisk hasn't been inspiring for long term reliability actually - the few I've used and a good few people I know have found they stop working after 2-3 years while other brands still seem to work OK over the same time. I've not done any testing to be sure but anecdotally SanDisk ones seem to get much hotter doing the same work which might be why.

Don't have much experience with Samsung's SD cards personally but they seem to be reasonably good.
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The problem with buying SanDisk is that so many of them are fake, and good fakes at that. I had two, one fake and the other authentic and even the fancy packing was nearly identical on the fake. The speeds of the fake one were fairly decent so if you used them in a camera or phone you probably would not tell. The only difference was that the fakes write speeds were just over half of the original. Though even 50 MB/s can record 4K.
 
Yeah I'll probably settle on Samsung because it seems like its easier to discern fakes.

On the subject my dad happened to buy a card yesterday and I've been testing his to see whether is legitemate. Its a Samsung EVO+ 32Gb and from the outset everything looked spot on but then I ran the test speeds and they are weird, it this a good card? Sorry for those being photos but I ran the test on an old laptop and moving screenshots from there would've taken an hour, wich I guess could be one of the reasons for the results, also I used the included adapter, not sure if that can affect it?

https://i.imgur.com/hshHMk7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/YuxbMnG.jpg
 
MustacheBerry said:
Yeah I'll probably settle on Samsung because it seems like its easier to discern fakes.

On the subject my dad happened to buy a card yesterday and I've been testing his to see whether is legitemate. Its a Samsung EVO+ 32Gb and from the outset everything looked spot on but then I ran the test speeds and they are weird, it this a good card? Sorry for those being photos but I ran the test on an old laptop and moving screenshots from there would've taken an hour, wich I guess could be one of the reasons for the results, also I used the included adapter, not sure if that can affect it?

https://i.imgur.com/hshHMk7.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/YuxbMnG.jpg
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The Samsung Evo+ from what I can tell has a write speed of ~20MB/s and read of ~80MB/s. Your write speed seems about right and while the read speed appears very low this is probably because you are using it in an old USB2.0 port which in my experience often top out at ~20MB/s.

To really test the proper speeds of a card you need to test it in a USB3.0 port with an authentic USB3.0 card adaptor (fakes of these exist too).
I have about 4 of these and 1 was a fake and did not give full USB3 speeds.



This is the benchmark of a Sandisk Extreme Pro microSD card. This is the slowest card I now use in my camera or phones and is rated for around 95MB/s read and 90MB/s write and as you can see this gets pretty close to those figures.


This is exactly the same card/adaptor but used in my USB2.0 ports.


And this is exactly the same card but in a very good but old Sony USB2.0 adaptor though used in the USB3.0 socket.


As you can see, the last one is about the same speeds that you got. You get different results based on the speed of the port or the adaptor used. The included MicroSD to SDCard adaptor included does not really affect speeds.
 
Shocky-FM said:
I'd avoid anything from SanDisk, bought loads of them over years and none of them still work.

Stick with Samsung, they last longer.
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This is not true.

You have either bought fakes or mistreated them.

I have several Sandisk SD cards, I'm using a 64GB one now I've had for years, works great.
 
Clov!s said:
This is not true.

You have either bought fakes or mistreated them.

I have several Sandisk SD cards, I'm using a 64GB one now I've had for years, works great.
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I definitely agree with this. I've lost count of the number of Sandisk cards over the years and the only ones that had failed have turned out to be fakes.
Sandisk are generally considered the best and the problem with that is they are the first ones to get faked. Samsung came to SD card market fairly late after their SSD success and consequently they are much less fakes of those circulating.

So the best reason to buy Samsung is there was a statistically less chance of getting a fake.
 
Clov!s said:
This is not true.

You have either bought fakes or mistreated them.

I have several Sandisk SD cards, I'm using a 64GB one now I've had for years, works great.
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They were all from Amazon, bought over a period of 4-5 years, multiple orders. Unlikely all of them were fake, but they failed eventually.
 
Shocky-FM said:
They were all from Amazon, bought over a period of 4-5 years, multiple orders. Unlikely all of them were fake, but they failed eventually.
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Actually Amazon is the last place I would get SanDisk cards from. ALL the ones I got from there turned out to be fake. Some of the best fakes you will see but fakes nonetheless (I have a comparison picture somewhere on my drives, I'll see if I can find them)

I stopped buying them from there long ago as it just proved a waste of time.
 
Yeah I settled down on the Samsung for it being easier to figure out a fake, I don't really need top of the line performance and the price was a steal at under 6 pounds. Went through the tests, plooped over 7 GB of data onto it and it seems works fine. Thanks a lot for your help.:)
 
Play store has app's can download to phone that checks msd's if fake or not goes right through details of it tells you what chips using and all sorts! There are ones that give speeds also.

If buying cards stick to places outside flea bay Amazon places like KJVFairdeal/Totalblankmedia com E1 are good can go either in person or on line been there since noah landed on shop! so have Rep to protect but even places like here/OC get fakes in stock as supply lines get infiltrated! as often it's organised crime involved.

There getting smarter with hiding things as many on flea bay was 2gb sold as 64 then load some pics and many disappear! now trying other things?
 
MustacheBerry said:
Yeah I settled down on the Samsung for it being easier to figure out a fake, I don't really need top of the line performance and the price was a steal at under 6 pounds. Went through the tests, plooped over 7 GB of data onto it and it seems works fine. Thanks a lot for your help.:)
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Glad you're sorted. I have a few Samsung knocking around and they are decent if you don't need fast transfer speeds. More importantly I've never had a fake on of those. ;)
 
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