Best Micro SD Card for Steam Deck (Top 5 Tested & Compared)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 жов 2024
- ~Amazon Affiliate links for all SD Cards mentioned in the video~
▶Samsung Evo Select microSD Card (Best overall value):
Amazon US: amzn.to/3JvgLxq
Amazon UK: amzn.to/36K7JOL
Amazon CA: amzn.to/3tnwNnu
▶Sandisk Extreme microSD Card (Best performer):
Amazon US: amzn.to/3KOSh2z
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3qyv9xO
Amazon CA: amzn.to/3qjpivW
▶Sandisk Ultra microSD Card (Best budget cards):
Amazon US: amzn.to/35ZnXDQ
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3iBSFFO
Amazon CA: amzn.to/3IpPhIj
▶PNY PRO Elite microSD Card (Solid overall):
Amazon US: amzn.to/3KR8zIs
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3Nn31av
Amazon CA: amzn.to/3KXKGPd
▶Lexar Play microSD Card(Not recommended):
Amazon US: amzn.to/36lRh79
Amazon UK: amzn.to/3JLCfXa
Amazon CA: amzn.to/3N0Cpfv
As an amazon affiliate, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you when you purchase through the affiliate links listed in the video's description.
Hey guys! We tested and compared 5 different micro sd cards for the steam deck. We compared read and write speeds, loading times between the cards and the emmc storage, as well as the gb per dollar value. The list of cards can be found in the description just above this message.
I found that the best overall value tended to be the Samsung at the 128gb, 256gb, and 512gb categories. It had top of the line read and write speeds, and was typically competitively priced.
If you want top of the line performance at the 1tb category, I would go with the Sandisk Extreme. It's more expensive, but will offer you the best performance for both read and write speeds at 1TB for the price.
While the Sandisk Ultra was a bit slower on the write speeds, the larger cards (512gb and 1tb) are priced slightly lower than the others, so you could save some money if you don't mind the slower write speeds.
Lastly, it's a hard no from me regarding the Lexar cards. The write speeds were just terrible from overheating, and the card did not fit properly into my Steam Deck. I had to use tweezers to get it out, so I''d rather not recommend something that will risk causing damage to the deck's slot, even if the price is lower.
Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!
Music:
Reaching Out by Sappheiros / sappheirosmusic
Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 Unported - CC BY 3.0
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Music provided by Music for Creators • Reaching Out - Sappheiros
Hey guys, just wanted to clear something up: The cards that claim they can go up to 160MB/s technically aren't falsifying claims. However, you need a very specific card reader that supports the SD 6.0 Spec that will allow for those speeds. The steam deck has a standard UHS-I card reader that will allow for a theoretical 104MB/s and won't be able to reach the claimed speeds. Hope that clears up some confusion I created based on my comments in the video!
Why the hell wouldn't steam just use that soec then lol idk maybe heat or something anyway how is loading to keep vs SSD I couldn't believe what some big tech UA-camrs and valve was claiming. I'm thinking the 64gb model and the 512gb SanDisk extreme is my play
I was about to mention that it also depends on your drive
I suggest you test capacity also, you might be surprised that not all of them format to the same result, I found that Samsung EVO will format a bit bigger than most, something I noticed when burning images of retro gaming collection, some would fail but never had problems with EVO
@@AndreVandal do you think I'm fine just playing all my games on a 500gb SD SanDisk extreme. I'm 50-50 on whether to get The 64 or 256gb model
@@Spencerwalker21 By all the info I have seen on the deck the 64 gb holds up against all models. When using the sd card as your storage that will be all you need to play any game. (Loads on par with the ssds)
So all this boils down to is preference or bragging rights on the nvme size of your deck...
So a deck measuring contest if you will.
The reason the read speeds were never over 100mb/s is because that's the read speed of the Steam Decks SD slot
Thank you so much for making this video! I've no idea how some of the larger channels with Steam Deck coverage have ignored this topic for so long, so it's awesome that you took it upon yourself to test out some different cards with the Deck.
Not so nervous about my SanDisk Extreme 1TB gamble now!! 😅
Thanks ChunkeeMunkee!
I bought the same card for my Steam Deck. Supposed to get my email this Monday to pay! Excited to be $700 poorer soon lol
Yeah no matter who I watched on about this thing that nobody talked about this I'm glad he did because I feel like this is very valuable information because I want to get a 1 TB micro sd to
@@erikedward283 totally, no-one else seemed to cover this!
I also went 1TB. I ended up getting a SanDisk Extreme in the end, but only because I picked it up at a crazy discount - I think if I were to buy again I'd just go for an Ultra.
If you want to save $20 the Samsung SD cards are available on the Samsung site for lower prices than Amazon at this time. The 512 GB card was $59.99 as opposed to $79.99. Great vid btw, very helpful! Would love to see one on the best SSD for the Deck!
Do you know which one it is on their site (512). I do not see the same card that Jake has listed in his about section.
@@Darksagan He was talking bout the 256 GB cards for the most part and the Sandisk 1 TB ones. I was just looking at the middle option of the 512 GB and comparing his link to Amazon with Samsung's price on the 512 GB card, where Samsung had the better price.
I got double 512 gb Samsung cards for around 100 dollars, to me that’s crazy that I bascially got 1 tb of storage spending only 100 bucks
Thanks brother you saved me money, so easy to Amazon have the best price, they usually do.
I got one for 50 euro on amazon app with the 7.50 euro discount
The cards aren't lying the steam deck has a hard cap at 100mb/s Value announced this some time back. As long they have that U with the 3 in it and V30 you're good on SD cards though of course results may vary
Also make sure your card isn't fake. Lots of fakes are sold online these days and often get sold by reputable dealers in place of the legitimate cards.
Would have loved to see random read and write speeds aswell.
Same, random IO per second or IOPS are typically much more important than sequential read and writes. I was wondering how much it would affect load times but I guess we'll have to look for a different review.
Really appreciate you testing these! I can't believe no one else did this. Props to you dude! :D
Thanks Anthony!
I've been using Walmart's Onn cards for shooting 4k video for a while now with perfect results. I just got a 256 GB Onn card that's rated U3 and it's worked great in the Steam Deck so far. It was around $35.
Super helpful video. Thank you so much. Smaller channels like yourself have made this steam deck research so easy and palatable, straight to the point, no filler, pure statistics.
Now I’m torn between the 512 EVO or 1TB extreme. I supposed I’ll keep my eyes out for the deals. I got time anyways for my Q4 order.
Get one of each. You'll probably need it. Otherwise the EVO it is really good for the price. They should have built sd card slots in the steam deck case.
This was an extremely helpful video. The graphs and tables you made were super clear and well made. The conciseness of this video was also highly appreciated. Thank you so much.
Glad it was helpful!
The other thing to add is the card rating - all of the cards with an A2 rating had the fastest read and write speeds, and all of the cards which had slower read and (particularly) write speeds had an A1 rating.
On that basis, the Amazon Basics 1TB Micro SD card, with an A2 rating, seems worth while testing :)
The Steam Deck actually straight-up doesn't support A2 rated cards properly, so that's... weird.
@@colbyboucher6391 The Steam Deck DOES support A2 rated cards.
@@colbyboucher6391 a2 will write installs faster but doesnt improve performance
@@ellienyan I seriously doubt that considering it's all sequential reads. When you've already got one bitstream you'd better go fast AF.
Hello there, thanks for confirming my best choice with your vid. I did some research myself and ended up buying the Samsung EVO Select 512gb because it was kind of the best money value and also many people said it's one of the best cards for the Deck. Now i am just waiting for my Steam Deck to arrive hopefully in October or November
Got that samsung sd as well, steam deck is shipping today cant wait
I’ve been waiting for a video like this!! Thanks for making it! :)
Just to make one thing absolutely clear. It's not the Steam Deck's 'fault'. The maximum read speed is limited by the UHS-I industry standard which is 104 MB/s. Now some custom card readers exist that can read some cards faster but they are weird duck in the pond. The Steam Deck is normal, not bad and they didn't go cheap. Also, make sure your sdcard supports A2 for fast random access. If it's not written on it, then it is certainly A1.
Thanks this was useful! I’m gonna go with the Sandisk Extreme
I bought the Ultra 256 a while back. Good to see the load times and the read is pretty much universal across these. My download only gets up to like 14MBps so I shouldn't see much issue with mine. Thanks!
Hi James. I had a 1TB ultra with the Deck. It worked fine for awhile, but then totally broke, unable to reformat it. Hope I just had a bad luck.
@@injurera my 256GB is still working for now. Hopefully it stays that way.
@@mandalorian43 still working?
@@Will-qn3cy Yep!
@@mandalorian43 awesome! no noticeable issues with games or downloading etc then?
A few lesser known brands, Nextorage(Japan) Silicon Power(Taiwan/USA) these brands also have sales often on 256gb to 512gb cards and also come with 5 year warranty, they might not be as fast as top brands but great way to have swappable SD cards if you need back ups.
Silicon power has 512gb for $30 on sale direct from manufacturer.
Wait the Samsung 512 Evo is 47.99 right now that's too good to be true
Loving the Samsung Pro Plus I just picked up. Should be a bit better than the Evo used here.
are they just as fast ?
Thanks for the explanation, like how you presented the facts. Went for the Samsung Evo 512 for about 44 euro (prime days deal).
Thanks so much for the video! I was honestly surprised by how to the point and informative this video was! It quickly saved me from doing quite a bit of research. Thanks again!
I have the 1tb Sandisk Extreme. It's on sale on Amazon for $150 right now.
you should put to the test the amazon basics 1tb
got the Samsung 512 select from watching your info video, thanks and salute from UK
Been waiting for someone to do this comparison. Thanks for the info.
Thanks man, was googling around looking for exactly this info
Perfect timing for such info, thanks! Snagged a 512GB EVO for $60 on AMZ. Almost caved for a 1TB SDE but you saved me $100, perhaps i’ll just switch my 256GB SSD out if its not enough 😅
Got my reservation email today, research time 😂
Kinda wishing they'd have a cap for the card slot, so it doesn't get filled with dust and debris. It would also provide some extra security for the card itself when slotted so I don't feel like I'll accidentally jostle and break the card.
Fantastic video! I have a 400GB sandisk Ultra class 10 A1 from an old project. I was planning to buy a 1TB for emulation and to use the 400GB card for actual games (combined with the 512GB model) now I have a better idea what to get! I wish Samsung had a 1TB model, but since it appears mostly write speed is impacted and most emulated games will load to ram anyways, I think the 1TB sandisk will be alright. Great video!!
Thanks Seth!
Thank you for your video. It was very hard to choose the right SD card, because of your video I got the Samsung Evo. Thanks a lot!
Interesting how the write speeds are different between the A1 / A2 cards. Worth investigating. Also - I don't know how you benchmark, but perhaps try benchmarking the write speeds by copying a single, large file to the SD card (such as a video or a .zip file). See if that makes a difference.
I kinda suspect the reason for the cards starting fast then slowing down - might not be due to overheating, but rather the command queue getting filled.
I haven't had any issues with my Lexar 1tb. I guess if you are really adamant than yes, get the best. But for the same price of a 1tb Sandisk I was able to get the Lexar 1tb, screen protector, case and accessories for around the same price.
Nice video. This particular model of Samsung EVO Select is really good. I also bought a Samsung Pro Plus 512GB which is slightly better. I've got also a SanDisk Ultra which broke after a slight usage on the Deck, but I may just had a bad luck. Now I'm really interested to see performance tests under the following conditions: 1. Games installed and uninstalled several times on the SD Card without reformatting (fragmentation). 2. SD Card filled over 95% of total storage.
Deck can only read up to 104 mb/s so it ain’t better to have for deck than the select
@@B727X In theory yes, although the advertised sd card speed is the maximum reached, and in practice varies. In that sense you may still have better performance.
Nice man, been waiting for a video like this.
Thank you for the best video on the topic I have seen thus far!
My wife bought me a 1tb SD card for Christmas. I don't know which one, we'll see next week.
For people who are confused about Samsung's EVO Plus and EVO select, because on spec sheets they look literally the same, the answer is they really are the same thing. EVO select is just exclusive branding to some North American suppliers like Amazon
Thank you for the disclaimer about hacked/modified cards - it’s good to assume not everyone is aware of scams like that
Great video, wanted to make sure the card I got was ideal. Thanks!
Glad I could help!
thanks for the comparisons. Will probably go for one of the Samsung's when my deck comes in Q2
Glad I could help!
This speed stuff seems rather pedantic. In the scheme of things I can't imagine this making much difference.
Saw this on Reddit. Thank you for this; very informative.
Btw, the Samsung EVO Select 512GB versions are on sale right now on Amazon (at least in Europe). 50 EUR a pop, so I got myself two. :D
short and sweet! :) thank you!
How can you say that Lixar 1T card is going to have bad write speeds when the Lixar card you tested was an A1 card and the Lixar 1T card you showed in the video was an A2? The A1 and A2 classification let you know how many random read/write operations the card can perform, A2 being twice as efficient than an A1 card.
When looking for an SD card look for the following:
SDXC I for the best read speeds.
U3 (usually printed on the card as a 3 inside of a u) for the best write speeds.
A2 for the highest number of random read/write operations the card can perform.
I agree with you about Lexar I have had a lot of failures with them over the years (their QC is horrendous). I would add a note that if your on Amazon, and you see a "Sponsored !" like in 3:26 that is a major Red Flag, and should be avoided like the plague. 90%~95% of Sponsored product are Chinese knock offs and/or scam products that is why they have to pay Amazon to push their crap this goes for most electronics sold (Newegg, Walmart, eBay, and others that do 3rd party sales do the same too.)
I bought the Samsung EVO Select on Amazon literally just now for my Steam Deck. Let’s see if it lives up. Thanks for the video man.
so does it lives up???
the lexar you test says A1 and the 1tb lexar you showed on amazon said A2. I don't know if maybe the A2 would perform better than the card you had tested.
Great! Thanks for testing. Really useful 😃
Thanks Manny!
Teamgroup microSD cards are also worth checking out. Have one myself.
You sir have earned a subscriber!
To the point!
I already went for a 1tb Lexar Play card, it was about half the price mentioned here on Amazon. I did see a ridiculously cheap 1tb card that I didn't recognise the name of so I swerved that and went for something more trustworthy. Happy so far.
It seems to have at least installed GTA 5 quick enough and everything loads fine there.
Thanks mate, for literally 460$ I get the cheaper steam deck plus the samsung evo and so far people reccomend that, and glad to stop by here, exited to get my hand on it
Under your description you list the SanDisk Ultra MicroSD as the best budget, but in my opinion, SanDisk is the most expensive. I have a 512gb MicroSD card made by SanDisk. It was a pricy 50 dollars CAD. The 1 TB option is a whopping 130 dollars. Silicon Power, on the other hand, is highly rated but also 40 dollars cheaper.
I just installed a lexar card and have had zero fitment issues or snags. Fits exactly like my sandisk. Also seems to be writing pretty quickly. Maybe the older lexar cards had some things that got fixed with latest batch.
My steam deck should be delivered tomorrow!!!! Can’t wait 😂
I ended up buying a 512gb PNY Micro SD card, fair price as well. Atleast they seem to be solid micro sd cards from your description.
Hey, the lexar card was a a1. A closer comparison would be the 512gb/1tb ones since they are a2
The Ultra was A1 also.
@@dalex5868 Yeah but the Lexar is priced almost identically to it but its speed is A2 so for value the 512-1TB Lexar would be better
@@S1rCumference I dont know.. the 1tb extreme was on sale the other day for not much more then the Lexar. That's what I ended up getting. I would say go SanDisk if you can find it on sale.
@@dalex5868 Haha i bought it on that sale as well. But for regular price its definitely better to get the Lexar 1tb over the extreme(when its half the price)
I don't know if anyone will see this in time. Amazon is having a deal on a few of these micro sd cards as a DOTD, get them soon before you miss your chance to save some money!
I have the Samsung Evo and the SanDisk Ultra, I wish I knew of the slower SanDisk write speeds before i moved RDR2 from the SSD to the SanDisk microSD, that transfer took ages, should have put it on the Samsung…great comparison video!
Thanks man! Appreciated.
I tested my 1TB Lexar card after I received it from Amazon and I had a consistent 30mbps write speed on it.
For some reason the 256GB Lexar is A1 but the larger ones (512GB and 1TB) are A2. So if you’re looking into a higher capacity card, the Lexar might be competitive with the other cards that were tested.
When you test a card and it doesn't match it's expected read speed it could be your card reader. When you test several cards and they all top out at the same read speed below their respective ratings, it's definitely your card reader. Not all support the higher speed interfaces that new cards are capable of for example.
Very helpful video! Thanks
Thank you! Fantastic video
Lexar cards fit and work fine, he most likely got a bad one, just in case any one is worried as the performance and price are fantastic typically. I havethe 1tb card and its amazing
Same here, Lexar card with no issues. It does take a while to copy or download stuff to the card but honestly I have close to 15 games on there and it worth it to me for the price.
Are you able to clarify: was all the testing done on the deck, or did you do some testing on a normal computer? As I don't see how testing which cards read/write best without doing those tests directly on the Steam Deck (which is what we want to know) can be a valid testing methodology.
was already looking at the 512gb Samsung this video just solidified my choice.
This video is kinda misleading regarding the Lexar.
1) I think it getting stuck was just a random thing that could have happened with any card and it just happened to be with the Lexar. I have it and it is visually identical to the Samsung EVO, and ejects exactly the same.
2) You got the A1, which is only on the 256GB and below.
The Samsung card is on sale and cheaper than Sansdisk right now!! It’s at 50$ something so make sure to check that one out first instead!
The price for SD cards have absolutely plummeted since this video came out. You can find SanDisk extreme 1 TB cards for less than the cheap Lexar ones were when they came out
Wow I looking at a Lexar card and you helped me dodge a bullet. Thank you!
Great, good thing I chose Extreme 1TB 😁
So pretty much it doesn't matter, the Lexar cards are perfect for the Steam deck other then the, it got stuck, oddity.
Honestly the slow write speed doesn't really matter, there is a reason why a 4tb qlc ssd is fine as a steam drive, ultimately it's still faster than sata, and read speeds are really all that matters for games.
Also have a 512gb Samsung and a 1tb Lexar mine didn't get stuck btw so it could just be a manufacturing issue, they honestly felt the same $150 versus $200 after tax for the SanDisk isn't really worth fretting over honestly sure the games installed a little slow and if you plan on playing Ark:SE that has a ton of constant updates I probably wouldn't recommend the Lexar card but if you are using it for emulation you will be fine....honestly save the money and put it to a nice Dbrand skin and screen protector.
Hey Jake, I'm new to your channel and have recently purchased a steam deck along with your recommendation I brought the 1tb SanDisk extreme but now I would like your recommendation on the internal M.2 ssd. Any date on when you'll be making that video?
If you get the Sandisk Ultra just be prepared for longer download/ install times to your deck. It plays fine though. No different than the internal I'd say.
What about in-game performance in AAA games? Is there any difference at all between A1 and A2?
@@glaubersenarega No, there’s really not anything I’ve noticed. The download and install rate is annoyingly bad though. And since games are regularly updated it exacerbates the issue. As far as gameplay goes however even if there is a difference in load times or something it’s not by much and not something I have ever noticed at least. Definitely not something that affects the actual playing experience or FPS.
@@HelicopterRidesForCommunists Thanks for the feedback!
@@glaubersenarega No problem my guy
Rlly confused on the 1tb option and 512gb. The 1tb option costs like more than 2 times more than just getting 2 seperate 512gb so idk tbh.
Update: Basically i lucked out the 1tb one went on sale on amazon! official seller everything thankfully. for £133 pounds really good deal. Sandisk Extreme btw. Hopefully it serves me well. Although if i do feel even that is not enough ilprobz get another 500gb micro sd from samsung or something and hot swap them depending on wt i need. Although i think 1tb and the 256gb i have should be ight for now
Dankeschön, wirklich sehr hilfreich 😊
Thank you for making this video. It's probably the best I've seen that actually looks at this. I'm curious what your testing methodology is though? My Deck shows up next week and I was planning on using fio in desktop mode to transfer 40GB files to get a good amount of data both with sequential read and writes and randomized read and writes. Then test that for ext4 and btrfs.
Thanks Ubiquill! I hadn’t really seen any tests done so figured this might help some people out. I got the read / write speeds using the black magic disk utility tool which will get speeds from various tests. The numbers in this video are the overall base numbers the program provided. Load times were recorded from the time I hit “play” in steam, until the time the game loaded and the main menu showed up. You should be good with either the Sandisk Extreme, PNY, or Samsung - all three of those sustained those speeds for 10+ minutes while the other two dropped in write speed almost immediately. Hope that helps let me know if I can answer any other questions!
@@JakeFishmanTech In your video you mentioned that you popped the cards into your "computer" to test the speeds. Does this mean these tests were done on an external computer and not the Steam Deck itself? If so, I'm curious if the 90MB cap you saw on all 5 cards was a result of whatever SD adapter or port you were using.
For most accurate results that would pertain to game loading on the Steam Deck, you would ideally want to test from the SD slot on the Deck itself, from within Linux (to rule out any odd driver issues with Windows on Deck), and in particular look at random read / random write speeds rather than sequential (since random file access is much closer to the experience of loading in a video game).
Hey Avohkah! I did test them through my MacBook initially, however I also tested the sequential read/write speeds directly through the deck itself and they were roughly the same. I didn’t test random read/write tests however, as I wasn’t sure exactly how to do that in Linux. Was going to do some research and update the description with that info. Do you have any suggestions for CLI tools or a GUI tool to get random read / write speeds?
@@TurahkTamer I noticed that too, and I thought one of two things.. Either he's playing on the term 'computer', because even Valve kept saying 'It's a PC' in their Q&A when they unveiled the Deck to the world.. OR he just made a mistake and meant 'Steam Deck'. Either way, I'm sure he tested the cards in the Deck slot because otherwise what would be the point of the video? I guess we'll have to wait for his answer.
This is pretty much why I expected the SanDisk extreme to be a better choice for the Deck than the Ultra. Ultra will severely limit download times. Thx for the test.
Will likely go for the 1TB Extreme, since Samsung doesn’t have a TB option
Yeah, if you have fiber and good enough router to get those download speeds.
I already filled up my 512gb sd card, damn I should've bought the 1tb sandisk but damn, over $170 😬.
About the MicroSD. Steam Deck only supports USH-1. Don't waste money on a higher rated card if you are only using it on the Steam Deck.
The only way I could keep the speed fast for gaming is slow formatting a 75% partition of the sd drive, slow format a partition of the remaining unallocated space and then delete that partition. 256gb becomes 180gb but remains fast.
I personally use either Team or Silicon Power if I can not get a Samsung on sale. I got a Silicon Power 256GB in my Switch and a Team 32GB in my CFW PS Vita. These two brand are cheaper than the top 5, they usually run as well as the PNY, and Team has got a 1TB now available for $132 (SP is $150 currently).
Thanks for the info! Will definitely check out those two brands
This video was worth watch just for the info on the fake TB card info. Thx
The steam decks card slot is limited to 100 Mbps
Very interesting how much PNY has improved in the past 3 years.
You sure your SD card adapter was using full bandwidth? Usually these adapters are junk and don’t have the proper bandwidth
Thanks was very helpful
Have you done a video for the switch? What goes for the Steamdeck also goes for the Nintendo system?
I just purchased the PNY 512gb for $57.00
I did some research and the read write speeds all seem close to as advertised
a1
Did you test the Sandisk Extreme Pro?
Honestly the issue with A1’s is downloading games imo, the process takes forever on them
Sad about Lexar. They used to be a top brand for removeable media. Just another story about a great American company that was ruined by being shuffled around until eventually being sold off to China, usually after all of the company's patents have been cherry-picked. Between the 90's to mid 2010's they were a great benchmark for CF and SD cards. After being acquired by Longsys in Shenzen, China, they have really tanked and made the brand name useless.
no bs but a straight up good video. sub!
Great work keep it up.
Great insight.
thank you sir already choosed my card