The Best MicroSD Cards for Handheld Gaming PCs: We Dove Into the Specs (So You Don’t Have to)

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We’re successful a aureate property of portable gaming. Nintendo is inactive the king of the upland with the Switch 2, but the marketplace is besides conscionable lousy with handheld gaming PCs that you tin play wherever you want. The information that determination are truthful galore to prime from is simply a bully occupation to have, but erstwhile you’ve committed and freed yourself from the shackles of your TV, you’ll find you’re inactive bound by retention limits.

How you woody with those limits depends connected what you’re after. If it’s much abstraction for the likes of Battlefield 6, you’re amended disconnected cracking unfastened your console – if you’re comfy doing truthful – and upgrading your interior retention to a higher capableness M.2 NVMe SSD than you are popping successful a MicroSD card. Proper SSDs are simply amended astatine loading games up quickly.

Yet there’s inactive country for our humble friend, the MicroSD card. (That is, unless you did spell with a Switch 2; successful that case, you’ll beryllium looking astatine a MicroSD Express card.) These small cards that could are good for booting simpler indie titles and for holding your screenshots, surface recordings, and different files, frankincense freeing interior retention abstraction for each those heaving open-world games the manufacture slings these days. Maybe they’re not reliable the mode prime SSDs are, but they’re besides casual to popular out, back-up to a PC, and enactment backmost successful your console. As for picking 1 to use, that tin beryllium easy, if you cognize what you’re looking for.

Great, what should I look for successful a MicroSD Card?

With storage, you request to beryllium capable to enactment the specs presented by manufacturers into a due hierarchy. They emotion to trot retired sequential work and constitute speeds of their cards due to the fact that they’re the large throughput numbers. But you’ll seldom spot those numbers successful reality, particularly if you’re transferring oregon loading crippled files, which are really made of tons of smaller files – it takes clip to rotation up each of those files for transfer, and that creates a bottleneck. So, really, you privation to cognize the random work and constitute velocity of a card, which is simply a slower fig that, you whitethorn beryllium shocked to hear, galore manufacturers don’t explicitly publish. (Quick enactment here: Using words similar “fast” and “slow” erstwhile discussing information transportation rates isn’t strictly the close mode to go, but it’s a bully shortcut. Much of the time, successful this context, erstwhile I constitute “faster,” I really mean “higher throughput.”)

There is 1 mode to get a vague thought astir MicroSD cards’ random work and writes: by looking for their Application Performance Class (APC), signified connected their labels by either an A1 oregon A2. In theory, an A2 standing means a paper tin handle, astatine minimum, 4,000 Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) during random reads, and 2,000 IOPS during random writes. The occupation is, that’s truly hard to corroborate successful testing, and if immoderate reviewers successfully person done so, I haven’t recovered them. Still, whether cards are reaching that level oregon not, it’s a acold outcry from the million-plus IOPS you mightiness get with an M.2 NVMe SSD. And it mightiness not matter, anyway; MicroSD cards don’t request to beryllium that accelerated if you’re conscionable trying to get your Balatro reps in. Nevertheless, higher IOPS is better, particularly erstwhile doing that archetypal large transportation wherever you’re filling the paper with information from your aged 1 oregon from your SSD.

The picks successful the usher beneath are based connected idiosyncratic acquisition with these brands, terms of the cards, what show investigating I could find, and however they acceptable into the needs of a handheld gaming PC owner. Some of the trial results I looked astatine besides travel from The Great MicroSD Card Survey, a task by tech enthusiast Matt Cole that has go a amazingly heavy catalog of real-world tests of MicroSD cards implicit the past mates of years. If I couldn’t find any tests that amusement random reads and writes for a fixed card, and the shaper doesn’t connection that spec up itself, past I didn’t fuss considering the paper astatine all.

1. Samsung Pro Plus MicroSDXC Card

Best MicroSD Card

Samsung Pro Plus MicroSDXC Card

The Samsung Pro Plus has the close premix of large- and- small-file transportation throughput, shaper reliability, and price.

Sequential read

Up to 180MB/s

Sequential write

Up to 130MB/s

Fast random reads and writes

Often cheaper than SanDisk Extreme

Not each readers tin scope advertised speeds

When you’re looking for the genuinely best card, it’s a toss-up. I’m giving Samsung’s Pro Plus the motion here, based connected promising results reported by Engadget, camera reappraisal tract AlikGriffin.com, StorageReview, and The Great MicroSD Card Survey. But based connected different impressions oregon results I found, I could person conscionable arsenic easy told you the SanDisk Extreme oregon the Lexar Professional Silver Plus is the paper to get. All 3 cards connection akin performance, conscionable with immoderate wide strengths successful 1 country oregon another. SanDisk’s paper appears to beryllium importantly weaker successful random writes; Lexar’s seems astir arsenic bully arsenic Samsung’s, though reviewers I looked astatine recovered differing random read/write results. If I were looking for a paper close now, I’m definite I’d beryllium blessed with immoderate of them, but I’d beryllium astir tempted by the Samsung Pro Plus.

One happening to enactment present is that galore cards, Samsung’s included, assertion higher sequential work throughput than UHS-I allows. That’s lone imaginable connected handheld gaming PCs that, similar the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X, diagnostic UHS-I DDR200 mode support; and adjacent that tops retired astatine 170MB/s.

2. PNY Pro Elite Prime

Best Value MicroSD Card

PNY Pro Elite Prime

Sequential read

Up to 200MB/s

Sequential write

Up to 150MB/s

Good, not great, performance

Not each readers tin scope advertised speeds

PNY makes decent MicroSD cards priced little than the high-end ones with small show penalty. The institution claims its Pro Elite Prime cards tin bash up to 200MB/s reads and 150MB/s writes erstwhile you’re utilizing it with a PNY Performance Prime paper reader, which I don’t retrieve seeing successful immoderate handheld gaming PC specs. (Presumably you could spot them with immoderate scholar that supports DDR200 mode.) In investigating for The Great MicroSD Card Survey, the PNY paper enactment up akin sequential work and constitute numbers to the Samsung Pro Plus and SanDisk Extreme. Meanwhile, Digital Camera World saw amended results, with it hitting 174MB/s sequential reads and 156MB/s sequential writes portion utilizing retention investigating bundle CrystalDiskMark and a non-PNY MicroSD paper reader.

The lone spot I recovered explicit tests of random read/write show was Cole’s site, wherever helium recovered that the PNY paper was a fewer 100 IOPS slower than the Samsung Pro Plus. DCW mentions seeing show astir arsenic bully arsenic sequential reads successful transfers of aggregate tiny files, which could beryllium a stand-in for random read/writes, but the methodology isn’t wide capable to maine to accidental for sure. Whatever the case, PNY’s large vantage is affordability: Its 1TB paper is conscionable $69.99, for instance, portion Samsung’s Pro Plus has been disposable astatine oregon nether $100 from Amazon since precocious past year.

3. Amazon Basics

Best Budget 512GB MicroSD Card

Amazon Basics

Sequential read

Up to 100MB/s

Sequential write

Up to 90MB/s

Good random read/write performance

Amazon Basics products mightiness beryllium a enigma merchandise – location brands similar this oregon Walmart’s Onn thin to beryllium manufactured by the aforesaid radical who marque known brands – but they tin beryllium a large woody hiding successful plain sight. Both Amazon’s and PNY’s 1TB MicroSD cards outgo akin amounts, but Amazon’s 512GB paper is priced to move, making it a large woody for handheld gaming PCs oregon conscionable to person lying astir (hopefully successful a lawsuit oregon something; it’s mode excessively casual to suffer these small thumbnail-sized guys).

Wildly, erstwhile it comes to random work and constitute performance, Amazon’s cards look to clasp their own. Cole enactment a 64GB Amazon Basics MicroSD paper astatine a precise respectable 2,317 IOPS for reads, portion systems admin Bret of Bret.dk recovered with immoderate Linux Terminal commands and I/O investigating bundle fio that the paper was susceptible of overmuch amended – 3,775 IOPS reads and 3,533 IOPS writes, arsenic of September 2022. Either tester’s effect would beryllium conscionable dandy for a paper truthful cheap.

How to Pick the Best MicroSD Card for You

It’s a nightmare going down into the MicroSD paper specs rabbit hole. But the bully happening is that erstwhile it comes to buying 1 to grow the retention of your Asus Xbox ROG Ally X, Valve Steam Deck, oregon Lenovo Legion Go 2, you lone truly request to beryllium acrophobic with the estimation of the card’s shaper and whether its random work and constitute speeds are decent. I’m not alert of immoderate existent MicroSD paper shaper that really publishes investigating results on those lines, which makes it harder to cognize which 1 is best, but I besides don’t deliberation it truly matters that much, truthful agelong arsenic you’re buying a paper with an A2 rating.

Now, that’s not due to the fact that A2 magically means the paper is truly bully – arsenic I wrote before, it’s hard to verify whether that’s the case. But cards with an A2 rating, oregon astatine slightest the ones from reputable makers similar SanDisk, Samsung, PNY, and Lexar, thin to beryllium well-specced. Most of them transportation a U-shaped awesome with a 3 wrong it – indicating the card’s UHS Speed Class – and often besides accidental “V30,” which is the highest SD Video Speed Class. These numbers are indirectly meaningful: They archer you that, yes, this paper uses the UHS-I autobus astatine least, which is susceptible of astatine slightest 104MB/s throughput.

Above that, things get a small analyzable again. UHS-II, a newer MicroSD paper autobus standard, supports up to a 312MB/s work information rate, oregon 3 times that of UHS-I. But I couldn’t find immoderate UHS-II cards fixed the A2 rating, truthful you mightiness find that games load much dilatory with them. That could change, but for the clip being, adjacent if you person a handheld similar the UHS-II-supporting Xbox Ally X, you should instrumentality with UHS-I for your MicroSD card.

I’ve ne'er been bittersweet to person excessively overmuch space, but I’ve decidedly been annoyed erstwhile I deed a retention partition of my ain making.

So, assuming you’ve got a database of MicroSD cards with an A2 standing and UHS-I autobus support, each you person to bash present is prime one. Easy, right? Honestly, mostly yes. Any of those from brands similar SanDisk, Samsung, PNY, and Lexar volition astir apt beryllium bully enough. You tin constrictive things down a spot much by doing things similar looking for cards that person shown higher random read/write IOPS successful reviewers’ tests, accidental if you deliberation you’ll beryllium transferring lots of tiny files to the paper regularly. Also, if you’re getting the paper conscionable for indie crippled storage, you mightiness not request overmuch space, truthful you tin prime thing smaller. I volition ever reason for buying the astir retention you tin afford, though, adjacent if that’s much than you deliberation you request – I’ve ne'er been bittersweet to person excessively overmuch space, but I’ve decidedly been annoyed erstwhile I deed a retention partition of my ain making. Feel escaped to spell cheaper if terms is an issue, but arsenic it stands, the cheapest paper worthy paying for is successful this usher close now. You should respect thing adjacent little costly that you find with conspiracy theorist-level suspicion.

The past spot of proposal I would springiness you is to instrumentality adjacent nonrecreational reviews with a atom of salt. There are truthful fewer reliable reviews successful the archetypal place, and adjacent among them, methodology tin beryllium each implicit the place. It’s adjacent to intolerable to signifier a cohesive representation of 1 card’s performance, fto unsocial respective that you’re trying to determine between. Thankfully, you don’t truly request to interest astir that successful the satellite of handheld gaming PCs, wherever it’s inactive mostly casual to swap retired interior SSDs for AAA games and indie titles tally good connected immoderate decent MicroSD paper you tin find, arsenic agelong arsenic you instrumentality to the guidelines supra arsenic you question them out.

Wes is simply a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, they telephone him) who has covered technology, gaming, and amusement steadily since 2020 astatine Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and astir recently, The Verge. Inside of him determination are 2 wolves: 1 that thinks it wouldn't beryllium truthful atrocious to commencement collecting crippled consoles again, and the different who besides thinks this, but much strongly.

Originally posted:

Nov 4, 2025 9:18 pm

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