Western Digital brand SanDisk and competitor Micron have unveiled the latest portable memory innovations at this week’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The new range of microSD cards will pack a whopping 1TB of storage and are planned for release starting in April.
The SanDisk model will launch for $449.99. Micron’s variant will follow later in 2019 and at competitive price. The SanDisk model is a massive improvement in storage space over the company’s previous efforts, seeing an increase of 600GB of storage over the current 400GB model. Along with the larger memory, the new cards will also feature Extreme UHS-I technology which allows for data on the cards to be read up to twice as fast as previous SanDisk cards.
For comparison, the SanDisk model will read data at 160MB/second, whereas the Micron range will only reach speeds of 100MB/second. However, Micron has a slight edge in data writing speed. Both companies were beaten to the 1TB card by Lexar who launched the 1TB SDXC flash memory card back in January. These cards are often used in smartphones, digital cameras, and some gaming devices.
The amount of data these companies have started to deal with can seem incomprehensible at times for some but might make more sense when filtered through the lens of the Nintendo Switch. A 1TB card will allow you 1,000GB of storage, or room to install approximately 75 copies of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This amount of space will likely satisfy most Switch owners for at least the next few years.
SanDisk has also announced a new 512GB MicroSD card which will utilize the same UHS-1 technology found in the 1TB model. This new card will also launch in April for $199.99. While the 1TB card will be available for purchase until April, keep an eye on the official SanDisk site for possible pre-order information and local retailer listings.
