Running out of storage on your smartphone, tablet or 4K video camera? Well, good news, SD cards have never been more than affordable.

... And crucially, never offered such huge storage capacities either. Samsung recently announced the availability of a 256GB version of their popular EVO Plus MicroSD card series. Not unlike Samsung'due south solid country drives, the EVO+ MicroSD card takes advantage of the company'south advanced 48-cell layer V-NAND engineering. This enables both, higher capacities and greater performance.

The EVO+ 256GB has been rated for read and write speeds of upwardly to 90MB/s. With 256GB at your disposal, users tin can at present record upward to 12 hours of 4K UHD video or 33 hours of Full Hard disk drive video or store up to 55,200 photos without needing to alter or replace the memory carte du jour.

Worth noting is that while the previous 128GB EVO+ card was a U1 classified storage device, the new 256GB EVO+ is rated U3. So what does this hateful?

Both U1 and U3 are the 2 Ultra High Speed classes for modern SD cards, and the rating is determined by minimum functioning. U1 cards will provide write speeds of at least x MB/southward while U3 cards are good for a minimum of 30 MB/s. Typically U1 cards have been designed for 1080p video recording, while U3 is required for 4K.

In more concrete terms, the EVO+ 128GB was rated for a read throughput of up to 80MB/s, while writes were express to but 20MB/southward. This makes the new 256GB menu a substantial pace forrad, with reads that are expert for 95MB/southward and writes accept taken a huge boost to 90MB/s.

The 256GB menu is the only model in the EVO+ series to boast such impressive read and write speeds. It also makes Samsung the first company to deliver a MicroSD at the 256GB capacity, that is also U3 certified.

The EVO+ 256GB microSD bill of fare provides avant-garde protection coupled with long-term reliability: information technology's waterproof, temperature-proof, X-ray-proof, and magnetic-proof. Samsung are obviously confident in what they are offering here with a ten-year warranty to back it up. The petty bill of fare's impressive warranty helps justify the alpine request price of $250.

Performance

For benchmarking we have used a USB three.0 card reader capable of reading at over 100MB/southward, should the SD card be capable of sustaining that kind of throughput. The benchmark program of selection is CrystalDiskMark every bit it gives us a good thought of the sequential and 4K read/write performance.

As advertised the Samsung EVO+ 256GB is capable of achieving a sequential read speed of 95MB/southward, while the 88MB/s is very close to the suggested 90MB/s throughput. Unfortunately, we don't have an EVO+ 128GB model to compare the 256GB carte with. Still we can see that the performance is comparable with Samsung's high-speed Pro+ 32GB MicroSD card and other smaller U3 rated cards.

The random 512K operation is very good, though the EVO+ 256GB was slightly slower than the SanDisk Farthermost Plus 64GB in this test.

When it comes to pocket-size random 4K performance the Samsung EVO+ 256GB is the all-time performing MicroSD carte du jour we accept seen yet. Very few MicroSD cards are capable of reaching a read throughput of 8MB/s, allow alone exceeding it, so a swell result for Samsung here.

Summary

The new Samsung EVO+ 256GB MicroSD isn't simply large on storage, information technology is also very fast. Typically, smartphone and tablet users will want a MicroSD card capable of delivering strong random 4K read/write functioning. This then makes the EVO+ 256GB the perfect pick for such applications. On the flip side, content creators using high quality 4K cameras desire large sequential write speeds and once again this is what the EVO+ 256GB delivers.

In terms of competition, Samsung is the first to arrive to the mark on this tiny footprint which gives them an border. There are a few other 256GB MicroSD cards effectually, merely to my knowledge none are U3 certified.

With that said, brand sure you demand the operation, because you're paying a serious price premium for this tiny high-speed storage device at $250. Professionals and enthusiasts may be able to justify the toll, still casual and light users that are simply after a large MicroSD card, there are more cost effective options.

Furthermore, if you don't actually require a MicroSD card and tin can make do with a standard SD card so at that place are faster 256GB options that cost half as much, and then proceed that in mind.

For the ultimate MicroSD performance and chapters and so the EVO+ is as adept equally it gets. Those who practise invest in the EVO+ 256GB volition be well looked later on by Samsung's 10-year warranty, which could meet some get a very long fourth dimension earlier their adjacent upgrade.