SanDisk Extreme Pro V30 A2 microSDXC UHS-I U3 64 GB (SDSQXCY-064G-GN6MA)

Record speed

The Extreme Pro is claimed to meet the overall speed class C10, UHS class U3, and video speed class V30. It is also advertised as meeting the requirements of class A2 for working with mobile applications, games, etc. The description of the Extreme Pro also mentions that this card, along with a linear read speed of 170 MB/s, can offer a linear write speed of up to 90 MB/s. As you can see, the Pro prefix in the name is not just like that; on paper, this is one of the fastest microSD cards.

Expectations and reality

However, such statements by SanDisk need to be verified (from experience). In practical measurements, it turned out that it does not fully correspond to the declared characteristics. We were unable to obtain a linear recording speed of 170 MB/s. The real indicator turned out to be slightly lower than 100 MB/s, synthetic tests painted a similar picture. And the matter here is in a small trick, which is mentioned in a small footnote on the company's website: "To get such a result, you will need a device of the appropriate class." For example, a branded card reader, which is still hard to find. It turns out to be a story like with SSD on the fourth-generation PCI-E bus: crazy speeds, but there is very little equipment on sale that is ready to support such speed.

Great for working with smartphones

The Extreme Pro also didn't impress with its small-block performance: when writing, the performance figures were only slightly higher than the requirements defined by the A1 speed class. In other words, the characteristics given in the Extreme Pro specification somewhat embellish its capabilities. Although its real performance is not as impressive as on paper, it is still one of the fastest microSD cards on the market. Given the complete protection against any adversity and a price that is much lower than the price tag at the start, we get a very interesting option for a variety of tasks, be it backup storage in a smartphone or the main memory for an action camera.