Best microSD cards of 2024: top picks for your micro storage needs (2024)

In today's digital age, managing extensive data across various devices is crucial, and so finding the best microSD card is more important than ever.

These tiny yet powerful storage solutions are perfect for transferring and saving a range of files, from documents to entertainment, fitting seamlessly into a wide range of devices such as smartphones, cameras, and even gaming consoles like the Nintendo Switch.

Despite the challenge of choosing between the best microSD cards from countless options based on cost, performance, and reliability, we've simplified the process by reviewing and listing the top contenders. Our comprehensive analysis covers each card's performance, pricing, and warranty, ensuring you select from the best on the market.

Quick List

Best microSD card: Frequently Asked Questions

How to choose the best microSD card

Other than the benchmarks, we considered four factors that could help you select the perfect microSD card for your usage.

1. Use case: Like SSD, there are broadly three types of microSD cards. One geared towards value-for-money, one geared towards performance (i.e. how fast) and one geared towards endurance (e.g. drone, dashcam, bodycam etc.). Choosing the right one for your needs will determine your overall experience.

2. Capacity: It's not worth buying memory cards with capacities smaller than 512GB because that's the sweet spot, the lowest per GB cost (around $50 per TB). Great if you have a tons of 4K videos and RAW photos. I'd recommend investing in 1TB cards as they've come down in price significantly and carry a very small premium. Note that all the capacities will likely be much less than stated when formatted. It is worth noting that there are sadly, dozens of fake 1TB and 2TB memory cards available on open marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon for rock-bottom prices. We strongly discourage anyone from purchasing them; they are big, fat scams.

3. Value for money: For most users however, value for money is the most important metric, not only across brands but also across capacities. Which is why we don't test small capacities (they're very poor value for money) and why we consider challenger brands - Netac, PNY, Lexar, Silicon Power, Teamgroup - as well (as long as they have some sort of pedigree).

4. Warranty: Opt for microSD cards that offer long warranties. Amazon is the only one we know that offer a short one (one year). Remember though, Should data on them ever become corrupted or accidentally deleted, you can also try one of our best data recovery software.

How we tested the best microSD cards

Our team of reviewers have tested a range of data storage solutions, including the best portable SSDs, the best external hard drives, and the best external hard drive for Mac.

After having formatted the cards to exFAT, we test microSD cards the same way we test these other storage solutions. We use the latest versions of CrystalDiskMark, Atto, AS SSD and AJA benchmarks, noting the best scores achieved in each. They are all free and can be downloaded by anyone. MicroSD cards are usually divided into classes, giving a rough idea of the minimum performance to be expected.

A Class 4 card is guaranteed to deliver at least 4MBps, while a Class 10 should surpass 10MBps. Similarly, many vendors report their speeds in terms of "x" rating, which is a multiple of 150KBps (the read speed of a standard CDROM drive). A 100x card can be expected to deliver more than 14MBps.

After these synthetic tests, we then transfer a bunch of files and folders, totaling around 10GB, to get a real-life transfer speed using the latest version of Fastcopy.

The best microSD card: our top picks

The best microSD card of 2024 in full:

Below you'll find full write-ups for each of the best microSD card options in our list. We've tested each one extensively, so you can be sure that our recommendations can be trusted.

The best microSD card overall

The Silicon Power 1TB A1 microSD looks like 'one card to rule them all' at first glance. A low price point paired with reasonably fast read and write speeds makes it a more-than-desirable option. And while we don’t expect these cards to hit top numbers in testing, we did find this card only reached a write speed of 58MB/s, less than the advertised 80MBps. A read speed of 90MB/s is also a touch shy of claimed max read speeds. But considering how little this card costs, it's a capable storge device that should more than match most devices you throw at it. We were pleasantly surprised to see its performance at such a low price.

We wrote: "The Silicon Power 1TB microSD card delivers what it promised, a solid, if unimpressive performance, at a rock bottom price, significantly undercutting the rest of the competition. For single-handedly bringing the prospect of owning a 1TB storage product closer to the masses, it deserves a best value award."

Read our full Silicon Power 1TB microSD card review.

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The best budget microSD card

Despite being one of the cheaper microSD cards in this guide, the Lexar Play surprised us during testing, popping out a healthy 75MB/s write speed and 83.1MB/s read speed. The latter didn't match up to its advertised 150MB/s read speeds, but it did excel at the stated 30MB/s write speeds, which means this card trumped some of the more expensive cards in our round-up.

If you’re looking to grab a microSD card for your drone or other media device and need to bank big data (capacity exceeds 1TB) or perhaps need multiple decent cards, the Lexar Play is a great option.

We wrote: "The Lexar Play 1TB is the latest to join the 1TB group but it does so with a whimper rather than a bang. Its rather strange behavior in our real life tests combined with average pricing mean that it misses out on the top spot."

Read our full Lexar Play 1TB microSD card review.

The best microSD card for warranty

Teamgroup claims this microSD card, the Elite A1, can read up to 100MB/s and write 50MB/s, and in tests, it came pretty close to those speeds. This makes it a very fast card, and with smaller files, it's even faster, which means this is a great card as an all rounder memory card. While not as cheap as Silicon Power, it makes up for it thanks to a lifetime warranty, the only in this price range (remember, it costs less than $100) to offer this.

We wrote: "The Teamgroup Elite A1 1TB microSD card sets the standard for what the best microSD cards need to achieve. Affordable, fast, capacious and with lifetime warranty and technical support. A worthy editor’s choice."

Read our full Teamgroup Elite A1 1TB microSD card review.

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