Samsung 256GB SD Express microSD Card Announced – Time for a New Standard?

Storage Media

by Francesco AndreolaMarch 18^th, 2024

Samsung Electronics has recently announced that they have started sampling what they claim to be the “industry-first” 256GB SD Express microSD card. This tiny, high-performance media solution is expected to become available towards the end of 2024, along with new, large-capacity 1TB UHS-I microSD cards.

Specifications for the SD Express and microSD Express standards were first issued by the SD Association back in 2018 and last updated in November 2023. However, to this day, it seems like shrinking media storage to fit SSD-like performance and high capacity is still a daunting technological task.

Almost 3 years ago, Lexar teased the development of their SD Express and microSD Express cards. These were expected to come to market the following year, but, apparently, that time has yet to come. Now, tech giant Samsung is trying to beat the clock by unveiling a 256GB SD Express microSD card that should hit the shelves by the end of this year. Let’s take a closer look!

Samsung 256GB SD Express microSD – features

According to Samsung, their upcoming 256GB SD Express microSD card is the result of a “successful” joint effort with a (mysterious) “customer” to develop a(n equally mysterious) “product”, thus supporting the future of “mobile computing and on-device AI”.

Mystery aside, with sequential read speeds of up to 800MB/s, this new 256GB SD Express microSD card promises to outperform the current standard by four times and even SATA SSDs by about 1.4x. All this while still maintaining the tiny form factor that makes it possible to use such cards in action cams and drones, for example. The catch, however, is that there’s currently no camera on the market that supports the new SD Express standard. 

The card features a low-power consumption design as well as Dynamic Thermal Guard (DTG) technology to protect it from overheating, even when providing high performance for extended periods.

Samsung 1TB UHS-I microSD cards

On top of this, Samsung also announced that they have started mass production of new, high-capacity 1TB UHS-I microSD cards that rely on 8 stacked layers of their 8th-gen 1-terabit VNAND technology.

These cards have all the safety features you would expect from a reliable media storage solution, including protection against water, extreme heat, wear-out, magnetic fields, X-rays, and accidental drops.

Price and availability

There’s currently no official information regarding the price of these new microSD cards from Samsung. The 256GB SD Express microSD card should become available later this year, while the 1TB UHS-I microSD is scheduled to be launched within Q3 2024.

For more information, please visit Samsung’s website here.

What do you think of the upcoming SD Express standard? Are you ready to embrace it? What technological advancements are you expecting from it? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!