SanDisk Ultra 64GB MicroSDXC Class 10 UHS Memory Card Speed Up To 30MB/s With Adapter - SDSDQUA-064G-U46A [Old Version]

My review is a little backwards… but I thought the most relevant should go first. WARNING: ONLY BUY THIS CARD ON SALE! The *typical* price since summer 2013 is about $24 for 32 GB, and about $48 for 64 GB. DO NOT pay any more than this, and you can actually pay less if you have the luxury of time / patience. The lowest (non-lightning) price hit about $18.00 for 32GB and $35 for 64GB, in early December. I basically buy when the price hits $20 or less, and the 64 nears $40.00. From December 2013 to January 2014, I watched these cards change price on an almost daily basis. They initially went on sale for about $17.95 and $34.95 for 32 and 64 respectively. I watched them slowly increase in price, with random dips and peaks for a month. On January 6th 2014, they still show as a "Best Deal on Amazon" for "7 more days" but they are at the highest price point since last summer -- and higher than I have *ever* payed for these cards! So don't let the "Best Deals" section deceive you, at $27/$50, these are NOT a "deal" in terms of price. Okay, here's my actual "review" of these absolutely great SDXC cards. **** I have tried a variety of MicroSDXC cards, and so far the Samsung Ultra UHS1 are the best -- and the price can't be beat -- for all the most important reasons: speed, capacity, reliability, durability. I have not had a single failure, and I use these cards in my Nook HD+, Nexus 7 2013 (via USB) and my Canon 5D Mark II (with converter) and MacBook Pro (In the card slot). They're durable and waterproof, and I can use the same card in all these devices without reformatting. I even had one go through the wash, and I still use it for pictures. For the technically inclined, I have cards with *both* the Clockwork Mod bootloader (for the Nook HD+) and the MagicLantern firmware for my Canon EOS 5D II on the same card. I can pull it from the Nook, shoot pictures with the camera, and look at the results on the Nook by just pulling the card out of one device and placing it in the other. This should be possible with any SDXC/SDHC card, but it turns out that the Samsung UHS1 is the only card I've found that works reliably. Some cards won't boot because they're too slow too finicky, but all my Samsung UHS1s work great (the 64GB will not boot in the Nook, but no 64GB card will). I keep my eyes open for price drops on these cards because they've performed so well for me. Samsung also has a newer, faster card, but its price-point hovers somewhere north of "prohibitive" so I still stick with these. And that's good news regardless because as the new card increases its market share, these should drop even further in price.

So my lovely wife bought me a Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 for Father's Day and I've been loving it ever since. Just as other with Samsung products, the Galaxy Tab 4 has the ability to add a microSD card to expand the memory on the device. Since it's been over a year, I decided to do some more research to see if SanDisk offered anything new. As of 6/19/2014, their product lineup for microSD cards from worst to best (performance-wise) are the as follows: SanDisk SanDisk Ultra SanDisk Ultra PLUS SanDisk Extreme SanDisk Extreme PLUS SanDisk Extreme PRO Now, the difference between all of these cards are simply the speed in which you can read/write data to the card. Yes, the published rating of most all these cards (except the SanDisk regular) are Class 10/UHS-I but that's just a rating... Actual real world performance does get better with each model, but with faster cards come more expensive prices. Since Amazon doesn't carry the Ultra PLUS model of microSD card, I had to do direct comparisons between the SanDisk Ultra ($34.27), Extreme ($57.95), and Extreme PLUS ($67.95). As mentioned in my earlier review, I purchased the SanDisk Ultra for my Galaxy S4. My question was, did I want to pay over $20 more for a card that is faster than the one I already owned? Or I could pay almost double to get SanDisk's 2nd-most fastest microSD card. The Ultra works perfectly fine for my style of usage (storing/capturing pictures & HD video and movie playback) on my phone. So in the end, I ended up just buying another SanDisk Ultra 64GB card. I use my cell phone *more* than I do my tablet and if the card is good enough for my phone, it's good enough for my tablet. I don't own a 4K HD camera or anything like that, so I honestly didn't see a need to get one of the faster cards at this time. I am now a proud owner of 2 SanDisk Ultra cards and have absolutely 0 issues with it in my Samsung devices. I haven't had to buy a microSD card in a long time. The last time I bought one was for my cell phone over 2 years ago. But since my cellular contract was up, I knew I would have to get a newer card in addition to my new phone, the Samsung Galaxy S4. Reason for this is because I knew my small 16GB microSD card wasn't going to cut it. Doing research on the Galaxy S4, I wanted to get the best card possible that had decent capacity (32 GB or greater). This led me to find that the Galaxy S4 supports the microSDXC Class 10 UHS-I card, which is the fastest possible given that class. Searching for that specifically on Amazon gave me results of only 3 vendors (as of April) that makes these microSDXC Class 10 UHS-1 cards. They are Sandisk (the majority), Samsung and Lexar. Nobody else makes these that are sold on Amazon. Seeing how SanDisk is a pretty good name out of the 3 (I've used them the most), I decided upon the SanDisk because Lexar was overpriced and the Samsung one was overpriced (as well as not eligible for Amazon Prime). But the scary thing is that when you filter by the SanDisk, you literally get DOZENS of options. All of them have different model numbers, different sizes, etc. Then there's that confusion of what's the difference between SDHC & SDXC? SDHC vs SDXC: SDHC stand for "Secure Digital High Capacity" and SDXC stands for "Secure Digital eXtended Capacity". Essentially these two cards are the same with the exception that SDHC only supports capcities up to 32GB and is formated with the FAT32 file system. The SDXC cards are formatted with the exFAT file system. If you use an SDXC card in a device, it must support that file system, otherwise it may not be recognizable and/or you have to reformat the card to FAT32. FAT32 vs exFAT: The differences between the two file systems means that FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4GB, limited by that file system. exFAT on the otherhand, supports file sizes up to 2TB (terabytes). The only thing you need to know here really is that it's possible your device doesn't support exFAT. If that's the case, just reformat it to FAT32. REMEMBER FORMATTING ERASES ALL DATA! To clarify the model numbers, I I hopped over to the SanDisk official webpage. What I found there is that they offer two "highspeed" options for SanDisk cards. These are SanDisk Extreme Pro and SanDisk Ultra. SanDisk Extreme Pro is a line that supports read speeds up to 95MB/sec, however they are SDHC only. To make things worse, they are currently only available in 16GB & 8GB capacities. Since one of my requirements was to have a lot of storage, I ruled these out. The remaining devices listed on Amazon's search were the SanDisk Ultra line. But here, confusion sets in because SanDisk separates these cards to two different devices. Cameras & mobile devices. Is there a real difference between the two or is this just a marketing stunt? Unfortunately I'm not sure but I do know the price difference between the two range from a couple cents to a few dollars. Since I wasn't sure, I opted for the one specifically targeted for mobile devices (just in case there is some kind of compatibility issue). To find the exact model number, I would go to Sandisk's webpage (sandisk.com) and compare their existing product lineup. From there, you get exact model numbers and you can then search Amazon for these model numbers. That is how I got mine (SDSDQUA-064G). As for speed tests, I haven't run any specific testing, but copying 8 GB worth of data from my PC to the card literally took just a few minutes. One last note is that Amazon attaches additional characters to the end (for example SDSDQUA-064G-AFFP-A vs SDSDQUA-064G-U46A). The difference between the two is that the "AFFP-A" means "Amazon Frustration Free Packaging". Other than that, these are exactly the same. If you're wondering what I got (and want to use it in your Galaxy S4), I got the SDSDQUA-064G-u46A and it works like charm.

Physical Design and Speeds The 64GB microSDXC is red and blue, a bright change from existing black memory cards. That makes it harder to lose. As someone that uses (and loses) microSD cards on a regular basis, I can tell you that this simple change in color makes a big difference. It also looks snazzy. If this is your first microSD card, you should know that it's really, really tiny, about the size of the size of your pinky nail. It comes with an adapter that allows you to use the card in any SD slot, so it'll work with digital cameras and be easily readable in computers. The actual amount of space available on the card is 59.46GB. It's faster than most phone and tablet memory cards, with Class 6 speeds of up to 30MBps. I tested the read and write speeds using the Antutu benchmarking app on a number of Android-based smartphones. The read speeds consistently reached 30MB and slightly above for each test, while the write speeds averaged out to 13.5MBps. That's about identical to the results I got for a 32GB microSDHC card. Compatibility and Conclusions My biggest fear was compatibility. Most phones support microSDHC, which maxes out at 32GB. MicroSDXC is the new standard announced in 2009 that allows small memory cards like this to support storage sizes up to 2TB. The thing is, current phones don't have SDXC slots. Luckily, the card worked in every phone I tested it with. I threw it into a Motorola Droid Bionic, Samsung Galaxy S III, and a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play 4G, and it worked without a hitch each time. I also tried it with a Motorola Droid (4 stars), to see how it would work in an older device. Again there was no problem, and each phone was able to recognize the card at its full capacity, as well as read and write without a problem. The card also worked fine in multiple Windows 7 PCs and a 27-inch iMac. One Lenovo Windows 7 laptop had a problem reading the card using the included SD adapter, but that laptop also couldn't read a 32GB MicroSDHC card. If you're considering the 64GB SanDisk Ultra microSDXC card, it ultimately comes down to two questions. Do you need this much storage, and are you willing to pay for it? If you listen to lots of music, capture HD video, and take a bunch of photos, the microSDXC doubles the amount of storage available to you. And it may be costly, but it's less expensive than a brand-new iPod Classic.

SanDisk Ultra Class 10 micro SDHC card (16GB, 32GB, and 64GB) I purchased the 32GB card for my Samsung Galaxy S3 and the 16GB card for another video recording device. I formatted both cards in FAT32 using Windows 7, and functioned without drama in the respective devices. I purchased the 64GB for my GoPro Hero3 Silver edition. The reason I chose the SanDisk Ultra is for the Class 10 speed rating, as well as the waterproof, shockproof, vibration proof, and X-ray proof durability. I had the 32GB Sandisk fail after 2 months of easy usage in my Samsung Galaxy S3. I don't abuse my phone and it is not subject to extreme temperature/vibrations. Sandisk replaced it under warranty but it was quite a hassle to do this. The 16GB card however, has been subject to extreme temperatures for well over 4 months: from -5F to 100F and that doesn't include solar loading from sitting under the sun, as well as 100% humidity! The 16GB card was dripping with water after I experienced water intrusion in one of my cameras, and it had been soaked in water (while operating) for several months. The packaging was easy to open by simply cutting across the top. However, finagling out the blister pack took some patience. The Frustration Free packaging is essentially a cardboard envelope sleeve with a plastic holder and the SD card adapter with microSD card inside. This is how it is shipped! Overall: 4/5 stars. Very affordable and decently fast micro SD cards. These are perfect for smartphones or recording devices used in extreme environments. However, one of them failed within 2 months. The speeds are also inconsistent. I posted a benchmark photo on Amazon showing my speeds with all 3 sizes of cards and the 32GB was the fastest. UPDATE 28 OCT 2012 My 32GB card has failed after just over 2 months of use in my Samsung Galaxy S3 phone. It started dismounting/remounting intermittently by itself over night. I woke up this morning to find that the card is not readable via the phone and wouldn't work on my PC. The phone has not been abused and was not used in an extreme environment. This card was replaced under warranty by Sandisk.

I have tested dozens of SDHC and micro-SDHC cards. One disturbing trend I noticed is that: the speed class rating for micro-SDHC is typically inflated. For example, a 'class-10' rating means the card must deliver a sequential write speed of at least 10MB/s. But somehow, a class-10 microSDHC cards is always slower than a class-10 SDHC card from the same manufacturer. Case in point: the PNY 32 GB microSDHC Card (P-SDU32G10-EFS2) claims to be 'class-10', yet it can only write at 8.6MB/s maximum, while the full-size PNY P-SDHC16G10 achieved 13.4MB/s according to CrystalDiskMark v3.01. This SanDisk Ultra 32 GB microSDHC Class 10 UHS-1 card (SDSDQUA-032G-U46A) , however, proves to be the exception. It achieved a sequential write speed of over 10MB/s according to two different benchmark programs (11.8MB/s in "CrystalDiskMark", 10.6MB/s in "H2testw v1.4"). This is faster than all my other microSDHC cards, including two 'class-10' cards from PNY and Polaroid . A closer look at the file transfer speed using "Flash Memory Toolkit" revealed another nice surprise: For writing small files, this Sandisk Ultra microSDHC card performed just as well as its full-size counterpart, the SanDisk Ultra SDHC (SDSDU-032G-AFFP) . In contrast, all my other class-10 microSDHC cards perform poorly while writing smaller files. See the benchmark results I uploaded to 'Customer Images' for details. When you use a memory card in a digital camera to record HD video, it needs to store a huge video file each session. That means its sequential write speed is most critical. When used in a tablet or a smart phone, however, the card's random write speed for small files is more important. That's why in such applications, the Sandisk microSDHC will perform faster than the PNY and Polaroid cards, even though they are also rated as 'class-10'. [Bottom Line] As of this writing, the Sandisk Ultra microSDHC card ia actually priced lower than other class-10 cards from PNY and Polaroid. This makes the Sandisk the best value - especially if you need honest class-10 performance across all platforms. [Side Notes] - Do not confuse this Sandisk Ultra card with SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC (SDSDQY-032G-U46A) . The latter is rated for class-6 only. - The size of this '32GB' card is 29.7GB according to my computer. This is actually normal because computer people count one Gig as "2 to the power 30", which is 7.3% larger than one billion. So 29.7GB translates to 31.9 billion bytes, which is '32GB' according to marketing people. [Update on Feb 4, 2013] 1. Amazon combined the Sandisk Ultra 32GB and 64GB cards on the same product page. Please beware that your intended appliance must be compatible with 'SDXC' in order to used the 64GB version. My original review refers to the 32GB 'SDHC' version. 2. There are two part numbers for the same card. If you start from the Amazon product page and select 'Retail Packaging', you'll see the part number of SDSDQUA-032G-U46A. But if you click on 'Frustration Free Package', the part number changes to SDSDQU-032G-AFFP-A. [Update on Oct 5, 2013] The Sandisk microSDHC card works great in my new Samsung Galaxy S3, without the need for reformat (the default format is FAT32) [Update on Dec 26, 2013] My old test results were limited by the card reader and USB 2.0 port used. I re-tested the Sandisk UHS1 micro card using the Transcend RDF5 Card Reader connected to an USB 3.0 port. Here are the results from 'CrystalDiskMark 3.01 x64': - Sequential Read speed = 40.0MB/s (was 34.8MB/s when connected to USB 2.0 port) - Sequential Write speed = 13.1MB/s (was 12.6MB/s when connected to USB 2.0 port)

great product

I had been using a 'regular' SanDisk 32GB Micro SD card that came included with my HTC Thunderbolt I bought in 2011. The size was decent, but I never realized until upgrading how much I was lacking on the speed. I finally got one of these to replace my old card with my Galaxy S3. It is superb. I just recently got a Galaxy S4, and again, this card is just about the best expansion you can add to most any phone. With my old MicroSD card, I had gotten used to just sitting there, zoning out, as I waited patiently for my computer to transfer pictures/videos off my card to be backed-up to my PC's hard drive, or copying some music files from my PC to my card. With this new card, almost any single file (even hundreds of megabytes big) is an instant transfer, that transfers too quick to even bring up that "moving" dialog box in Windows 8. On my very big transfers (lots of HD video files at once, totaling several gigabytes), I have to wait, but I'm waiting for seconds instead of minutes. Combine the excellent speed with the fact that 64GB can hold a ton of data (compared to typical storage sizes on phones), and you have a very satisfied customer. Now I can procrastinate even longer the occasional transfers of all my pictures and videos to my PC, though I try not to. A lot of phones (like my S4) specify 64GB SDXC cards as the maximum they support, so this is about the best you can even get for the moment, unless you want to pay almost double for SanDisk's Extreme cards. Unless you have money to burn, I think these are a much better value and diminishing returns certainly kick in beyond this price point. But perhaps my next phone will support 4K HD video onto 256GB cards and I will yet again need to upgrade my card's capacity and speed... Anyway, bottom line on this product: AWESOME.

The 32GB Sandisk Ultra microSDHC UHS-1 card with adapter seems to work great in my Alcatel One Touch Evolve 5020T Android phone and NextBook 7 Android tablet. I purchased 2 cards in retail packaging (SDSDQUA-032G-U46A), one for each device, from seller Amazon.com. Very quick standard shipping, ordered Feb 5, arrived Feb 10. I haven't needed the adapter, but wanted it "just in case" I decided to use my micro cards later on other devices. When I used the USB cord to connect my devices to my computer to download files onto the new SD cards, the NextBook 7 tablet (Android 4.0.0) worked exactly as expected - as a "mass storage device". I could drag and drop as if it were a thumb drive. HAD PROBLEMS GETTING IT TO WORK WITH ALCATEL ONE TOUCH EVOLVE PHONE 5020T The One Touch Evolve phone (Android 4.1.2) was not so simple. It connected as an "MTP Media Player", which restricts file transfers to photo, video, and music. I could see the phone and SDHC card on Windows Explorer, and could drag & drop the acceptible file types only. Nor would it allow me to create my own folders. "Wrong" file types forced me to "skip" the file. Well, I had .ged files (for genealogy programs) and a vcard file with my phone numbers. Neither type would transfer. As a workaround, I changed the extension from .ged to .jpg, and got them to transfer that way. Then renamed them on the phone. My basic File Manager App on the phone was pitiful. Downloaded ASTRO File Manager from the Play Store which makes creating folders, renaming and moving files around much easier. In VERY TINY print on back of the retail package that my SanDisk SDHC card came in, it says "Download required. See www sandiskmemoryzone com". So I downloaded the SandDisk Memory Zone app from the Play Store. Didn't help with computer transfers at all, and I subsequently deleted it, but others may find it useful as a file manager. After several hours of frustration and internet searching, I discovered the phone itself was set to MTP Media Device, and the file transfer problems had nothing to do with my new 32GB card. Here are the steps I took to change the phone settings. I don't know exactly which actions solved the problem, so I'm listing all that I did. Downloaded and installed a phone driver from the Alcatel site to my computer. After installation, the driver folder did not show up until I restarted the computer. Altered my phone USB settings. Each phone has its own unique version of Android implemented, so settings may not be in the same place as on my One Touch Evolve. Apparently some newer versions of Android hide the USB settings, and some don't even provide the USB option at all. On my Evolve: Settings>About Phone>Advanced Settings>set Advanced Settings "ON" with the slider>USB debugging, then close Settings. Then I plugged it into my computer, and it was still seen as MTP Media Device. The "fix" was to restart my computer, and turn off my phone totally, then turn it back on. (Be sure to "Safely Remove Hardware" before unplugging the USB cord each time.) The next time I connected the USB cord, the phone had new messages, one was "Touch for USB options", and there were my choices - USB Storage, Media device (MTP) (the default), and Camera (PTP). I changed my default to USB Storage. I turned my phone and computer off several times during this process, and some times were probably unnecessary. Later I turned off the Advanced Settings and unchecked USB debugging, and my default is still "USB storage". I have no idea whether this was necessary to begin with, but I never saw the USB options until this option was turned on. Now when I connect the phone to the computer with a USB cord, a USB message appears on my phone, for me to click "Mount". One word of caution, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS click the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon on the computer BEFORE UNmounting on the device (phone or tablet). I failed to do this once, and it locked my computer up to the point it wouldn't shut down; I had to manually hold down the OFF button for a while. Your steps may be similar, but unique to your device. And hopefully a bit more straight-forward, without all the research and turning on/off! This write-up is my effort to provide some ideas of where to check for problems if drag and drop from the computer to the SDHC card doesn't work as expected. At one point, I even resorted to formatting the SD card, but it didn't make one bit of difference. After all this headache figuring out how to set my One Touch phone properly, the SDHC cards work exactly as I desired in both devices, like a thumb drive. I can drag and drop any file to my heart's desire. Highly recommend this card. If problems develop later, I'll update this review.