INTRODUCTION

   From smartphones and music players to handheld, action and car dash cameras microSD cards have surpassed every other type of memory card both in terms of sales and popularity, to date at least. As popularity (and thus market share) increases however so do demands and with quite a few camcorders and even smartphones currently equipped with 8k cameras recording speed has become extremely important for many people. The good news is that with the new Express standard (announced back in 2018) we may soon see microSD (and SD) cards with performance numbers easily surpassing 600MB/s (and going all the way up to around 1000MB/s) but at least for now UHS-II models offer the best performance around and so today we'll be taking a look at the latest Superior UHS-I 256/512GB and Superior Pro UHS-II 128GB MicroSDXC Memory Cards by Silicon Power.

   Founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic data storage industry experts, Silicon Power is committed to delivering outstanding product and service quality. Headquartered and with our own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, we have become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products. As an international player with four branch offices around the globe, we continuously strive to offer the perfect data storage solution for all requirements of modern digitalized life. With a strong focus on combining innovative technology and award-winning design, we live up to our brand promise to reliably preserve and protect your most valuable data. Because memory is personal.

   Silicon Power recently released two Superior lines of microSDXC cards (Class 10 UHS-I U3 V30 A1 and A2) and a single Superior Pro microSDXC line (Class 10 UHS-II U3 V90) all of which include several different capacities (32/64/128/256/512GB for the V30 A1, 32/64/128/256GB for the V30 A2, and 64/128GB for the V90). Of course, read and write performance also varies between models so although the V30 A1 and A2 lines offer speeds of up to 100MB/s for reads and 80MB/s for writes the V90 line goes all the way up to 290MB/s-160MB/s. This massive difference in performance renders the V90 line ideal for 8k recording and beyond. Finally, Silicon Power states that the entire line is water, dust, temperature and X-ray proof and covers it with a 5 year limited warranty.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE SUPERIOR 256/512GB & SUPERIOR PRO 128GB

All three samples arrived in blister packs from where you can take a quick look at the cards themselves.

As expected at the rear of all packs you will find a few words about the cards in 14 languages and company contact information.

Each microSDXC card comes with its own SD adapter (only the UHS-II one however stands out).

At the top of all three cards we find the capacity and speed classification while at the rear we see the data pins.

The additional rear row of pins (adding up to a total of 16 pins - 17 for SD card use) used in UHS-II cards is responsible for their impressive performance boost.

From this review and on for microSDXC UHS-II card benchmarks we'll be using the Kingston MobileLite Plus microSD Reader (if something significantly better gets released down the road, we'll update UHS-II card numbers and use that instead).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Memory cards are pretty much identical to flash drives so to make things easier for everyone we'll be using roughly the same testing methodology to successfully record achieved read and write data transfer numbers. The benchmark suites we'll be using for our memory card tests are HD Tune Pro (Read - Write average and max speeds), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read - Write performance), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (4GB Read / Write speeds) and ATTO (Average Read / Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into our charts (0 = we were unable to complete that test).

   As with all our storage reviews all tests are performed on our main rig running Microsoft Windows 10 Pro installation on a HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe SSD with all updates installed up to the day of this review (for ATTO and Crystal Disk Mark cards are formatted using the NTFS file system – however partitions need to be removed for the write tests of both AIDA64 and HD Tune Pro).

* As of April 2020, we'll be using our X299 test rig for microSDXC UHS-II (and above) memory card reviews.

TEST RESULTS – AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS – HD TUNE PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

CONCLUSION

   From our charts there are three very distinct things you can all take with you from this review, 1st that there's a huge performance gap between UHS-I (up to 100MB/s read and write) and UHS-II microSDXC cards (up to 288MB/s read and 156MB/s read), 2nd that HD Tune Pro doesn't like to play well with some of the models we tested today (we even used v5.75 just to be on the safe side only to get the same results however) and 3rd that 8k video recording and beyond (compressed) is now possible. Of course, the upcoming express standard should change everything (that is if it delivers its advertised performance) but based on the how long it took for UHS-II models to appear in the market and that UHS-III models are nowhere to be seen yet Express models shouldn't arrive for at least another year.

   Unfortunately due to everything going on in this world at the time of this review we have no accurate prices for either of the 3 cards tested, not in the USA or the EU so now i can only list the recommended prices which are USD32.99 for the Superior V30 A2 256GB and USD69.99 for the Superior Pro V90 (still haven't received word on the price of the 512GB A1 model). Overall the Superior Pro is without doubt the fastest card in our charts (to date) and even though both Superior models will most likely be more than enough for most people (up to 4k recording and more) the UHS-II standard is justifiably leading the market (for now at least) and for that the Superior Pro microSDXC 128GB memory card by Silicon Power grabs our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Top Of The Charts Performance (UHS-II V90)
- Endurance
- Price
- 5 Year Warranty

CONS

- Only Up To 128GB (For Now)