SanDisk Ultra 512GB microSDXC Memory Card + SD Adapter with A1 App Performance Up to 120 MB/s, Class 10, U1

Product Information

You might not need an SD Card for your Nintendo Switch immediately but if you plan on downloading some of the biggest titles you will undoubtedly run out of space.

However, given that only a handful of professional-grade cameras can offer that, and that they tend to use the larger CFexpress 2. Class 10 cards will also have an Ultra High-Speed rating: U1 or U3, symbolised by a “U” with the relevant digit inside it. In tests, our 128GB sample posted our fastest sequential read speed from a UHS-I card, at a barnstorming 185. Quick read speeds of up to 160MB/s let you transfer 1000 high-resolution photos and 30 minutes of 4K video (24GB) in less than 3 minutes. And if you’ve just splashed out on a new Steam Deck, then you’ll know that, whatever SSD you’ve got onboard, you’re going to fill it up with must-play gaming classics in a jiffy.With SanDisk QuickFlow Technology (64GB - 1TB), this card optimizes performance for timesaving media offloads with quick read speeds up to 190MB/s. Sign up to receive daily breaking news, reviews, opinion, analysis, deals and more from the world of tech. If you’re looking for a card that can run apps or cover video on your mid-range or high-end smartphone, you won’t get much better than this.

If you're after the absolute fastest available SD card for Switch with the biggest possible capacity then look no further than the SanDisk 1TB Extreme. It’s always worth checking online or in the manual to see whether your smartphone or camera supports the higher capacities – some won’t go beyond 128GB or 256GB, while others need a firmware update – but in the majority of cases, your chosen card should work.You need a V30 card to shoot 4K video at speeds of 60 to 120 frames per second, while V60 is the base level for shooting 8K video at 60fps. Not all cards are the same, with a ridiculously complex system of specs and standards out there, plus fake cards and some really poor performers, but we’re here to steer you in the right direction and make sure that you find the right card for your device.

Even shooting 4K video doesn’t require anything faster as long as you’re shooting at 30fps or 60fps, although professionals using a high-end SLR will want the overhead to ensure that their card doesn’t freeze in the middle of a shot. It’s far from cheap and we suspect most smartphones won’t use its full performance, but it’s a sign of where things are going. Plus, it’s A2-rated, so you can get fast application performance for an exceptional smartphone experience. While Nintendo officially recommends transfer rates of between 60 to 95 MB/s as a minimum, this card is rated at a blistering 170 MB/s.Sequential speeds matter most for copying large files and sustained data transfers, as they do when streaming 4K video to a phone or tablet, or recording 4K video from an action cam. The 32GB of internal storage of the system can fill up very quickly and, even with the upgraded 64GB capacity of the Nintendo Switch OLED, it’s easy to find yourself running out of space. This option becomes even stronger when you consider some of the higher capacity variations available. Finally, we run file transfer tests using a 2GB video file, to check whether the sequential transfer speeds we measured earlier carry over into real-world use.