Samsung SD Card Review – PRO Plus versus EVO Plus

By Nathan Kirsch October 13, 2020

Samsung introduced new PRO Plus and EVO Plus SD cards this morning that will be appealing for content creators and and professionals in the photography and videography space! The PRO Plus is aimed at professionals with sequential speeds of up to 100MB/s read and 90MB/s write. The EVO Plus is aimed at content creators with transfer speeds of up to 100MB/s read. No write speed is specified for the Samsung EVO Plus SD card, but both have the speed needed support 4K UHD and Full HD formats.

SD cards are used in all sorts of devices including drones, DSLR cameras, mirrorless and compact cameras, camcorders and PCs. This is why Samsung has both lines available in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities.

Samsung PRO Plus SD Card Specifications

Samsung EVO Plus SD Card Specifications

Both the Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus use the UHS-I interface and are backed by a lengthy 10-year limited warranty. All of the Samsung PRO Plus SD memory cards are U3, Class 10 speed class cards, but the two of the Samsung EVO Plus cards are U1, Class 10 rated. The specifications tables above were given to us by Samsung to help us review the card and discloses the sequential write speed on the EVO Plus cards.

As you can see there is a large performance difference between some of the smaller capacity cards. The Samsung EVO Plus 64GB for example has up to a 20 MB/s sequential write top speed. The Samsung PRO Plus 64GB has a 90 MB/s sequential write rating, which is 4.5x faster.

Samsung sent over the EVO Plus for Creators and PRO Plus for Professionals for Legit Reviews to try out. Both were 128GB cards, so to make comparisons really simple. The Samsung EVO Plus 128GB card is $19.99 and the PRO Plus 128GB card is $25.99. So, you are looking at about a $6 or 30% price difference to move up to the PRO Plus model.

Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus Pricing

	Samsung PRO Plus	Samsung EVO Plus
32GB	$9.99	$6.99
64GB	$16.99	$12.99
128GB	$25.99	$19.99
256GB	$49.99	$39.99

The white SD Cards look good and the font on the cards is easy on the eyes, so photographers, cinematographers and YouTubers should be able to quickly find and use the card they need for their shoot. The Samsung PRO Plus SD cards outstanding 90 MB/s sequential write performance rating makes it the better choice according to Samsung for 4K video recording and burst shots.

Samsung’s new SD cards are also reliable and are being marketed as having something called 7-multi proof. This is basically a testament to how durable the new cards are based on Samsung’s internal testing.

Wearout-Proof – Usually, consumers frequently put SD card in and out from cameras to PCs and other devices, to transfer data. Samsung SD Cards were conducted up to 10,000 swipe – wearout test. For example, assuming a user pulls the SD card from the camera and swipes twice a day when moving data to a computer, consumers can use the card over 13 years.
Water-Proof – EVO Plus/PRO Plus cards have waterproof to survive up to 72 hours in 1 meter depth of seawater. They are certified with IEC 60529 IPX7 (Edition 2.2) to reassure the users. Therefore, customers do not need to worry about accidently spilling or dropping water on Samsung SD card while they are moving the SD card.
Temperature-Proof – Professional photographers are not afraid of going places with harsh climates and Samsung SD cards would be there to support them. The SD cards endures temperature from -25 to 85 (-13 to 185).
X-Ray-Proof – When the SD card were put in ones bag down to get through airport security, he or she would get anxious about the SD card might be damaged because the memory inside the card is precious. Take those worries away through X-ray proof. Samsung SD cards x-ray proof protects the damage caused by airport X-ray machines (100mGy/210sec).
Magnet-Proof – Some might have an experience of replacing their credit card because they inadvertently shoved their cards in the bag with a magnet. However, Samsung SD card will be fine in their bags. The magnet-proof would resist magnetic fields of up to the equivalent of a high-field MRI scanner (15,000 Gauss).
Drop-Proof – Each floor height of a typical apartment is approximately 2.6 meters. Most of electronic devices would be broken if thrown away from the second floor. However, Samsung SD cards withstand drops up to 5 meters (16.4 feet), which is equivalent to the height of the second floor.
Shock-Proof – SD cards will be safe even the consumers accidently sit or step on the product. The cards were tested to survive extremely high levels of shock up to 1,500g* for 30 seconds. (*g : gravitational acceleration).

To try out the Samsung SD Card EVO Plus and PRO Plus we ran CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0h on an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X powered desktop PC on the AMD X570 platform. The Samsung SD Card EVO Plus 128GB topped out at 99 MB/s read and 67 MB/s write. Not bad considering this card is rated at up to 100 MB/s read and 60 MB/s write. The Samsung SD Card PRO Plus 128GB topped out at 99 MB/s read and 88 MB/s write. So, on these two 128GB cards we found the PRO Plus to offer over 30% faster sequential write speeds.

We won’t bore you with a ton of benchmarks, but we did look at linear write performance and card performed well with no performance dips! The result above shows the Samsung SD Card EVO Plus 128GB getting an average write speed of 64.8 MB/s while 24GB of data was being written to the card at peak speed.

There are many fake memory cards on the market, so Samsung has introduced an authentication utility for their memory cards. This tool can be downloaded for free and will let you know if the card is genuine or fake. This is a nifty little utility and is great for those that buy cards online to ensure they are real. Fake products often look the same on the exterior, but use inferior components on the inside that deliver lower performance and usually shorter lifespans! Our cards showed up as being ‘Genuine Samsung Products’ and that is a good thing as they sent them directly to us.

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

SD cards are a pretty straight forward product, but most people stick to the big name brands as they want to ensure they are getting a reliable product that is capable of meeting their speed requirements. The Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus SD card series both delivered very good results and we have come to expect that from a memory industry leader like Samsung.

Our testing shows that we were able to very close to meeting or actually exceeding the speed ratings on the two 128GB models that we tested. The Samsung EVO Plus 128GB SD card hit 99 MB/s read and 67 MB/s write and the PRO Plus 128GB SD card topped out at 99 MB/s read and 88 MB/s write. These are excellent sequential read/write speeds for content creators working with 1080P and 4K.

The Samsung PRO Plus SD card has significantly faster write speeds, so we feel they are worth the price premium if it can be afforded. Our Samsung PRO Plus 128GB SD card costs $25.99 and had ~31% higher write speeds than the Samsung PRO Plus 128GB SD card at $19.99. So, you are basically getting what you pay for here. About 30% more performance for a price premium of 30%.

We also like the fact that Samsung has released an authentication utility for their memory cards as you can ensure what you have bought online is real.

It is hard to go wrong with either of these Samsung SD card series as both are backed by 10-year warranties and are very capable UHS-1 SD cards!

Legit Bottom Line: The Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus SD card series are the first update from Samsung in the full-sized SD market in some time and both perform great!