SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDHC UHS-I 16GB Memory Card Review

SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDHC UHS-I

Last month SanDisk announced the world’s fastest microSDHC mobile memory card and we just had to get our hands on one to see what it was all about. The SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDHC UHS-I card is rated at 95 MB/s read and 90 MB/s write, so this card is going to be fast. SanDisk made this card for smartphone and tablet users who want to boost their device’s storage capacity while enjoying the fastest mobile experience. We have some of the fastest hardware in the world sitting on our test bench, so we figured we’d take a look at this memory card to see what it is all about.

The SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDHC UHS-I card is available in two capacities a modest 8GB card for $59.99 and a larger 16GB card for $99.99. The card that we were sent to review was the 16GB version that is sold under part number SDSDQXP-016G-A11. This card is class 10 and UHS Speed Class 1 rated (UHS-104). With a read speed of 95 MB/sec it means that this card is speed rated at 633x for those looking for CompactFlash IDE emulation speed numbers. The write speed isn’t much slower at 90 MB/sec or 600x. These are impressive ratings and this card should be able to easily handle full HD video and blazing data transfer speeds.

SanDisk Extreme Pro microSDHC UHS-I Card Features:

• Get unparalleled performance for your smartphone or Tablet
• Fastest transfer speed at 95 MB/s
• Featuring Class 10 for 3-D and Full HD video
  (1080p)
• Superior Photo, Full HD Video and App Performance
• Engineered with UHS-I bus architecture
• Water-proof, temperature proof, X-ray proof, shock
  proof

The SanDisk Extreme Pro card is compatible with any microSDHC-slotted device, so you can us it on thousands of microSDHC devices without any issues. If you use it on older devices you might be speed limited by the host device, but one is usually always limiting the other.

Flipping the SanDisk Extreme Pro micro-SDHC UHS-I card over you can see some of the trace routes on the black PCB and then the eight pins needed for operation. As we already mentioned this is a Ultra-High Speed (USH) memory card. We were told by SanDisk that this UHS-I card UHS-104 interface, which means it supports a clock frequency of 208MHz and should be able to transfer around 104 MB/s! Down the road we will see UHS-II cards that further raise the data transfer rate to a theoretical maximum of 312MB/s, so don’t think SDHC memory cards are going to be hitting a speed wall any time soon!

We tried the the SanDisk Extreme Pro micro-SDHC UHS-I card in a number of devices and had no issues on any tablet or smartphone. It worked just fine in the Motorola Atrix that came out in February 2011 as well as the Samsung Galaxy S III that just came out last month. You can see the Extreme Pro micro-SDHC being inserted into the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone in the image above.

Installation is a breeze and the Android 4.0 OS detected the card instantly and we instantly had 16GB of extra storage space to do with what we pleased.