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Title: The best microSD cards for the Nintendo Switch 2

Date: Thu, 07 Aug 2025 09:01:25 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/best...

The Nintendo Switch 2 is here, and that means a whole lot more people will
eventually need a new microSD card. While the new console comes with 256GB of
built-in storage ΓÇö eight times more than the original Switch and four times
more than the Switch OLED ΓÇö its improved performance means that some games
will chew up a ton of that space. Cyberpunk 2077 is a 59GB download, for
example, while Split Fiction checks in at 69GB. Other titles arenΓÇÖt nearly
as big (particularly those made by Nintendo itself), but chances are youΓÇÖll
want to add more room at some point down the road.

Whenever that is, youΓÇÖll need a microSD Express card. This is not the same
as the old reliable microSD cards you may have bought for the first Switch or
other gaming handhelds ΓÇö theyΓÇÖre newer, faster and far more expensive.
But if you want more space, theyΓÇÖre your only choice. If youΓÇÖre looking
to grab one today, weΓÇÖve laid out the best microSD cards for the Switch 2
and broken down what you should know before you buy.

The best microSD cards for the Switch 2 (aren't all that important) Jeff Dunn
for Engadget

The Switch 2 is the first mainstream device to require microSD Express for
storage expansion, so there arenΓÇÖt many options available to buy just yet.
Of the six compatible models weΓÇÖve seen thus far, weΓÇÖve tested five: the
SanDisk microSD Express Card, the Lexar Play Pro, the Samsung microSD Card
for Nintendo Switch 2, the PNY microSD Express Card and the GameStop Express
microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2. The first four are made by genuine
storage manufacturers, while the GameStop card appears to be a rebadged
version of another model. (This should be the case with another card sold by
Walmart under its Onn sub-brand, which we hope to catch in stock before our
next update.) We used the 256GB version of every card except for Lexar Play
Pro, which was 1TB.

After timing these microSD Express cards across a range of Switch 2 games,
our advice is simple: Get whichever one is available for the lowest price in
the capacity you want. They arenΓÇÖt identical, especially if you want to
move a game to the card from the consoleΓÇÖs internal storage (or vice
versa). But the differences in load times and overall performance within
actual games are tough to notice unless you have a stopwatch handy.

All five cards loaded up the digital version of Mario Kart World, for
instance, between 18 and 20 seconds. Each loaded the first Grand Prix race in
about 6.5 seconds. Getting to the start screen of Cyberpunk 2077 took about
38 seconds in each case. Loading a save in a particularly asset-heavy area
(Jig-Jig Street) then took between 26 and 29 seconds, depending on the card.

With Fast Fusion, a smaller native Switch 2 game, the initial load always
took six to seven seconds, while each card loaded the first championship race
in roughly 4 seconds. It was a similar situation with the Switch 2 upgrade
for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (using a Switch 1 cartridge):
Each card took just over six seconds to get to the start screen, between 19
and 20 seconds to load a save just before the final boss, about 16 seconds to
fast travel between Kakariko Village and Korok Forest, and so on. We saw no
significant issues with in-game loads when playing each game, either.

The SanDisk microSD Express Card and Lexar Play Pro. Jeff Dunn for Engadget

All of this suggests that the Switch 2 has a relatively specific target for
these cards to hit, and that there may not be much room for one model to leap
too far out in front of the others. WeΓÇÖll also note that the consoleΓÇÖs
built-in storage was consistently faster than any external option: The gap
wasnΓÇÖt always big, but no card truly outpaced it in any of our tests.
Loading that demanding area in Cyberpunk, for example, took about 22.5
seconds on average. So if you want the absolute fastest load times, donΓÇÖt
put your game on a card at all.

If you need the mental comfort of knowing you technically have the best card
available, get the SanDisk microSD Express Card. It had no outliers across
our many game loading tests, and it was consistently right near the top when
it came to moving games to and from system storage, which means it offers
strong sequential read and write performance. Benchmark testing on PC with
tools like CrystalDiskMark backed this up, as noted in our broader microSD
card buying guide.

Putting Mario Kart (a 21.9GB file) on that card took four minutes and 39
seconds on average, which was only second to the Lexar Play Pro by six
seconds. It was the fastest to write Fast Fusion (3.5GB), taking an average
of 27 seconds across three runs. Only PNYΓÇÖs card was faster to move games
back to the consoleΓÇÖs storage, but that one was far slower at writing games
to the card ΓÇö getting Mario Kart on there took seven minutes and 11 seconds
on average. Just note that the 128GB version of SanDiskΓÇÖs card has slower
sequential writes than the larger versions, including much slower sustained
write speeds (100 MB/s vs 210-220 MB/s). So transferring a game to that
particular model will take much longer.

Practically speaking, though, speed differences arenΓÇÖt as important in this
case as having lots of space to hold games at a price you can live with. To
make things easy, weΓÇÖve listed every Express card weΓÇÖve seen at retailers
at the time of writing below. Remember: You want microSD Express, not
ΓÇ£Extreme,ΓÇ¥ like the branding SanDisk uses for some conventional microSD
cards. A microSD Express card will have a big ΓÇ£EXΓÇ¥ logo printed on it.

128GB

SanDisk microSD Express Card ($60 MSRP)

PNY microSD Express Card ($47 MSRP)

256GB

Samsung microSD Express Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($60 MSRP)

SanDisk microSD Express Card ($73 MSRP)

Lexar Play Pro ($60 MSRP)

PNY microSD Express Card ($61 MSRP)

GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($60 MSRP)

Onn microSD Express Card ($36 MSRP)

512GB

SanDisk microSD Express Card ($125 MSRP)

Lexar Play Pro ($120 MSRP)

GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($100 MSRP)

Onn microSD Express Card ($66 MSRP)

1TB

Lexar Play Pro ($220 MSRP)

GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 ($190 MSRP)

All microSD Express cards will have this "EX" logo printed on them.
Nintendo/Engadget

As you can see, while the SanDisk card is fast, itΓÇÖs also the most
expensive of an already-pricey bunch. Is it worth an extra $10-20 to shave a
couple seconds off certain loads in certain games, or a couple minutes when
moving a game to external storage? Probably not for most people.

But stock for all of these cards has been patchy since the Switch 2 landed,
especially for the Walmart Onn model, which is by far the cheapest choice. If
only one card is actually available by the time you read this ΓÇö and you
must have it today ΓÇö itΓÇÖs safe to just get it. You wonΓÇÖt lose or gain
all that much when it comes to real-world performance.

Ultimately, though, we advise holding off on buying any microSD Express card
for as long as possible. President TrumpΓÇÖs tariff shenanigans could spike
prices a little higher in the short term, but in general, all of these cards
are about as expensive today as theyΓÇÖll ever be. And compared to
traditional microSD options, they are pricey: The Samsung Pro Plus, for
example, costs $17 for 128GB, $25 for 256GB, $43 for 512GB and $90 for 1TB as
of this writing.

The Switch 2 is extremely popular, so more microSD Express cards will need to
be made and prices will (eventually) come down. Ideally, weΓÇÖll see more
high-capacity options as well: Nintendo says the Switch 2 technically
supports cards up to 2TB, but so far only a couple even go up to 1TB. All of
this means you should try to use all 256GB baked into the Switch 2 first,
even if it means having to delete a game or two. But if you absolutely need
more space right away, the cards above should be fine.

What are microSD Express cards? A microSD Express card like the one on the
right has a second row of pins on the back. Jeff Dunn for Engadget

Most microSD cards are based on a standard called Ultra High Speed (UHS), of
which there are three versions: UHS-I, UHS-II and UHS-III. The vast majority
of cards you may have bought in the past utilize UHS-I. These have one row of
pins in the back and a theoretical maximum data transfer speed of 104
megabytes per second (MB/s). (Though many cards are able to surpass that
limit with proprietary tech and card readers.) The original Switch has a UHS-
I microSD slot, as do most other gaming handhelds like ValveΓÇÖs Steam Deck.

UHS-II cards add a second row of pins and can reach up to 312 MB/s. These are
pricier and much less common than cards based on UHS-I, but theyΓÇÖre
supported by some cameras and higher-power handhelds like the ASUS ROG Ally
X. UHS-III, meanwhile, is twice as fast as UHS-II in theory (624 MB/s), but
no microSD cards have actually used it.

UHS-I cards have held on over the years because theyΓÇÖre cheap, widely
supported and fast enough for the things most people need them to do: record
4K video, stash photos and so on. But with the Switch 2, Nintendo needs more.
The new console is dramatically more powerful, which allows it to run
demanding games that may have originally been built for stronger hardware
like the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X or gaming PCs. The device also uses UFS
3.1 storage internally, which is much speedier than the eMMC storage used by
the original Switch. (A custom file decompression engine helps improve load
times as well.) So if the Switch 2 is going to accept microSD cards, it needs
ones that wonΓÇÖt bring a serious drop-off in performance and can hold up
with modern games.

The Nintendo Switch 2. Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Hence, SD Express. This standard has technically been around since 2018 but
mostly went nowhere until the Switch 2 came along. It also uses a second row
of pins, but it lets microSD cards take advantage of the PCI Express
(PCIe)/NVMe interface, which is the same underlying tech used by modern SSDs.
As a result, it can produce considerably faster read and write speeds, with a
current theoretical maximum of 985 MB/s.

As noted above, real-world performance wonΓÇÖt be quite that fast. Even if it
was, the best microSD Express cards would still be much slower than the NVMe
SSDs used by the PS5 and Xbox. (Sony recommends SSDs with sequential read
speeds of at least 5,500 MB/s.) And theyΓÇÖll fall well below their peak
speeds under sustained loads: SanDisk, for instance, says sustained write
speeds for its 128GB Express card can drop as low as 100 MB/s.

But theyΓÇÖre still a marked improvement over old UHS-I cards, and in theory,
they should be quicker than some older SATA-based SSDs when it comes loading
game levels, asset streaming, retrieving saves or copying games to external
storage. Whereas SanDiskΓÇÖs microSD Express card can produce sequential read
speeds around 900 MB/s, LexarΓÇÖs Professional Silver Plus ΓÇö the top UHS-I
pick in our general microSD card guide ΓÇö topped out just over 200 MB/s, and
thatΓÇÖs with a proprietary reader. (On the first Switch, itΓÇÖd be closer to
100 MB/s.) Sequential writes and random speeds were three to four times
better as well, and sometimes even more depending on the benchmark we used.

It remains to be seen how well these Express cards will hold up with years of
use, and thereΓÇÖs no way to know exactly when their sky-high prices will
drop. Non-Switch 2 devices that support microSD Express are still exceedingly
rare, and the standard itself isnΓÇÖt backwards compatible with UHS-II, so
youΓÇÖll be limited to UHS-I speeds if you want to use your card with another
device (unless you buy a pricey external reader). Still, while the increased
costs and limited selection are annoying, the tech itself is worthy of a next-
gen Switch.

How we test microSD Express cards Jeff Dunn for Engadget

We put our microSD Express cards through a series of tests meant to simulate
how people would use each card on the Switch 2 in the real world. We mainly
worked with four games: a mid-sized title in Mario Kart World, a small one in
Fast Fusion, a relatively large one in Cyberpunk 2077 and a hybrid in The
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which ran off a Switch 1 cartridge but
used a roughly 10GB Switch 2 upgrade pack that was downloaded and installed
digitally.

We first timed how long it took to move each game from the systemΓÇÖs
internal storage to the card in question, and vice versa. We then timed how
long it took to load each game when installed to a given card. After that, we
measured how quickly the cards could load certain in-game scenarios: the
first Grand Prix race in Mario Kart; the first championship race in Fast
Fusion; fast traveling between the Jig-Jig Street, Embers and Downtown
Central areas in Cyberpunk and fast traveling between the Kakariko Village,
Korok Forest and the Hyrule Castle Town Ruins areas in Zelda. (We chose those
places in the latter two games because theyΓÇÖre more taxing than other
regions.) With Cyberpunk and Zelda, we also timed how long it took to load up
different save files in those locations.

With each test, we completed three to five runs to account for any
irregularities and marked down the average time taken between them. We did
each test in airplane mode, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off, to minimize any
performance drain that could arise from background downloads. Between each
test, we also spent at least an hour playing the games off each card to
ensure there were no significant drop-offs compared to the consoleΓÇÖs built-
in storage.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/best...
switch-2-160052947.html?src=rss

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