Samsung EVO Plus microSDXC UHS-I Card Review (256GB) – So Much V-NAND!

CRYSTALDISKMARK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0.3

Crystal Disk Mark is visually straightforward and is used for measuring the speeds at which your storage device reads and writes with random, mostly incompressible, data. Random data is more consistent with the everyday use of a computer, such as transferring videos, pictures, and music. Thus, this benchmark will be a better representation of speeds to expect on a video or stills camera over ATTO.

Testing with Crystal Disk Mark allows us to get a better look at transfer speeds while testing with incompressible data, as we might see with media.  These results pretty much match that of ATTO which is great. Speeds of 98MB/s read and 87MB/s write were achieved. 4K random performance is also pretty decent, so for those of you utilizing smartphones or tablets, you will have a pretty snappy experience thanks to this card over cheaper ones.

ANVIL’S STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL 1.1.0

Anvil’s Storage Utilities is the best software program available for benchmarking flash media.  Not only does it give an accurate look at transfer speeds and throughput, but also, it goes even further by identifying file sizes, disk access times, as well as system and device identification. It even has many extra features such as endurance torture testing and a TRIM button feature to manually trigger TRIM on supported devices.

Finally, Anvil’s Storage Utilities shows a max of 93MB/s for the read and a max of 86MB/s for the write. These speeds are very close to the rated spec and reiterate what we have seen thus far in our other two benchmarks. Let’s get to some real world testing to see how it does with actual media files.

REAL WORLD TESTING

File Transfer

For file transfers, we created a large folder of RAW image and Video test files which could max out the capacity as well as the sequential performance of the flash card. Below are the Windows showing the transfer rates achieved.

When transferring our large test folder of files to the microSD card we were able to achieve about 83MB/s write speeds. When reading, the card we achieved 93MB/s.

Next, we filled the card half way and continued to write the same test files to the card again. Below are our results.

As we can see, there are a few dips here and there, but performance doesn’t look to have degraded much at all. Speeds are still well above the 30MB/s minimum U3 rating. Overall, a very good show of performance for the Samsung EVO Plus 256GB.

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

More space is always welcomed given the increased presence of 4K recording and higher resolution images. Thankfully, the latest addition to the Samsung EVO Plus family gives us exactly that, more space. Up to a record-breaking 256GB of it to be precise! With this kind of capacity, you can record hours upon hours of video without the need to format your card. You can store entire music libraries, and in some cases, movie libraries on this thing so you never have to monitor your storage usage again.

The Samsung EVO Plus 256GB is a wicked fast microSDXC card that will not disappoint. With Samsung’s latest 48-layer V-NAND packed inside it, blistering fast speeds of up to 95MB/s read and 90MB/s write are easily achieved. So, when buying this product, you can be confident in its ability to deliver the performance you demand.

FINAL THOUGHTS

SD cards and microSD cards are everywhere. So many companies produce them these days that it is hard to pick which one is right for you. For many, the three main selling points are price, capacity, and performance. By packing the teeny tiny Samsung EVO Plus with their latest 48-laer V-NAND, Samsung is able to deliver a well-balanced, record breaking product. Due to its bleeding edge technology, great performance, and large capacity, it has earned our Editor’s Choice award! If you need high capacity in a small form factor, this is the microSD card for you.

Check out the Samsung EVO Plus microSDXC cards on Amazon Today!