It really is a sign of the state of the marketplace when buyers should get excited over a solid-state storage device hitting over 290MB/s and offering over 4,000 IOPS. However, for microSD cards that really is blazing fast. If anything, Silicon Power is actually being a touch conservative in their Superior Pro Micro SDXC UHS-II’s performance ratings as we did see read and write peaks even higher than their specifications. In this day and age that is almost unheard of, and why the whole V30/V90/etc. standard came about to get rid of cheaters. In our UHS-II camera this excellent performance translated to a bigger shot buffer, reduced wait time transferring the photos to our computer and does pay real world dividends. Just be aware that in order to actually harness the Superior Pro Micro SDXC UHS-II’s full potential the typical (aka ‘cheap’) $15 SD card reader will not cut it. This is a high-performance SD card that just happens to use a microSD form-factor. So if you want to spend less time waiting on your card to finish off loading all 128GB of data… be prepared to pay for an actually good USB 3.1 gen 2 card reader.
Equally impressive is, even in UHS-I only enabled devices (such as our Samsung Android tablets) the read performance is outstanding with the typical stutters/pauses/lag noticeably reduced when data was being accessed from the card. Yes, you will not get UHS-II performance but you will saturate the device’s SD bus, get every bit of performance the portable device has to offer and minimize the impact from the typical bottleneck associated with using ‘external’ storage vs. internal storage. In multiple devices actually using it to store game data resulted in a noticeably smaller difference in load times compared to running the game via internal storage. This is all thanks to the outstanding IOPS the Superior Pro offers.
When you then add in the fact that the Superior Pro Micro SDXC UHS-II costs less than most 128GB UHS-II class with similar specifications there really is a lot to like about the Superior Pro Micro SDXC UHS-II and almost nothing to dislike. Really the only thing you will not like is the fact that you will not just be able to head down to your local camera boutique shop of choice and pick one up. You will have to order online. SanDisk and to a lesser extent Lexar still ‘own’ the mainstream marketplace and few shops will want to expand their SD stock on hand. The slightly increased hassle factor however is worth it. The value proposition is just that good.
So if you are in the market for a new microSD card the Superior Pro Micro SDXC UHS-II deserves a long second look. You may just decide that, like us, buying UHS-I cards no longer makes sense… and if you do take a second look you will find the Superior Pro Micro SDXC UHS-II rather easy to justify. Great performance and a good price are one hard to resist combination.
The Review
Silicon Power A55 M.2 1TB
The Silicon Power A55 is going to be a siren call for those who fall inside its design envelope. Sadly, it is a rather small group of people who will fall inside this envelope. Instead, for most potential buyers the overall value of the A55 is going to be eclipsed by its bigger brother the A60.
