Samsung adds more speed to its Evo Select, Plus and Pro Plus microSD cards

Samsung recently announced the world’s first SD Express microSD cards. But it hasn’t given up on regular UHS-I microSD cards just yet. In fact, they’ve just announced a refresh of its Evo Select (buy here), Evo Plus (buy here)and Pro Plus (buy here) microSD card lineup.

The refreshed lineup bumps up the maximum transfer speed of the cards from 130MB/sec to 160MB/sec. The Pro Plus range is also seeing a new 1TB card, the first time Samsung has released a microSD card of this capacity.

Samsung Evo Select, Plus & Pro Plus – What’s new?

The biggest thing that’s changed in the new microSD card lineup is the maximum read speed. The previous model Evo Select and Evo Plus UHS-I microSD cards topped out at 130MB/sec. Now, they max out at 160MB/sec.

This isn’t going to make any difference when it comes to writing data to the cards. Despite being marketed primarily towards smartphones and handheld gaming storage, they do come with a V30 rating. No drone or action camera is going to attempt to write to these cards faster than 30MB/sec.

Where that extra speed will make the difference, however, is in pulling data off those cards and onto your computer. And that extra speed will be very handy, as the Evo Select and Pro Plus microSD cards will soon be available in 1TB capacities.

Faster than the UHS-I spec allows

It’s become quite common now that microSD and SD cards are being sold and marketed with speeds that shouldn’t really be possible. The UHS-I spec maxes out at 104MB/sec. In the real world, this works out to about 99MB/sec, with a little overhead for protocol data.

SanDisk has cards that boast up to 200MB/sec now (buy here), but they require a proprietary SanDisk reader (or the ProGrade PGM0.5 – buy here) in order to reach those speeds. I suspect, although I have been unable to confirm, that Samsung also requires a special reader to reach speeds beyond the UHS-I spec.

It’s also worth noting at this point that Samsung also makes 200MB/sec microSD cards in its Pro Ultimate lineup. So, these aren’t the fastest microSD cards Samsung makes, but they do represent a nice increase for those buying on a budget.

Price and Availability

There are ten new cards in total, although only eight of them are being released now. Four are in the Evo Select lineup, and four are in the Evo Plus range. They’re expected to be available to purchase in the next day or two, but you can pre-order them.

• 64GB Samsung EVO Select (160MB/sec) – $14.99 MSRP
• 128GB Samsung EVO Select (160MB/sec) – $18.99 MSRP
• 256GB Samsung EVO Select (160MB/sec) – $29.99 MSRP
• 512GB Samsung EVO Select (160MB/sec) – $55.99 MSRP
• 64GB Samsung EVO Plus (160MB/sec) – $15.99 MSRP
• 128GB Samsung EVO Plus (160MB/sec) – $20.99 MSRP
• 256GB Samsung EVO Plus (160MB/sec) – $31.99 MSRP
• 512GB Samsung EVO Plus (160MB/sec) – $60.99 MSRP

As well as the eight cards above, we have two new 1TB microSD cards coming later in the year.

• 1TB Samsung EVO Select (160MB/sec) – $109.99 MSRP
• 1TB Samsung Pro Plus (180MB/sec) – $119.99 MSRP

The upcoming 1TB Samsung Pro Plus is the faster of the two new 1TB cards coming, with read speeds of up to 180MB/sec and write speeds of up to 130MB/sec. It’s also available to pre-order bundled with a card reader for $127.99.