ADATA Premier and XPG SDXC and microSDXC Cards Review

Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks

Readers might have noticed that we refrained from including the benchmark numbers for the Premier microSD card sample. Unfortunately, this card could not successfully complete our evaluation workloads. Around 60% into the fio workload for the fresh pass, the card slipped into read-only mode. We were unsuccessful in getting the card to work again despite trying with different hosts. Based on the Amazon reviews for the SKU, it does appear that the Premier's problem is widespread.

In addition to raw performance and consistency, pricing is also an important aspect. This is particularly important in the casual user and semi-professional markets, where the value for money metric often trumps benchmark numbers. The tables below presents the relevant data for the cards ordered by the $/GB metric.

Out of the cards that we have evaluated, we have no qualms in recommending the ADATA Premier ONE SD Card and the ADATA XPG microSDXC Card. The former's performance earns it the recommendation despite its cost on a per-GB basis. The microSD XPG, on the other hand, is purely a value play. The other cards, despite coming out unscathed in our benchmark routines, are not as consistent as the above two. On the microSD front, people looking for a card with high-end performance might want to consider the Lexar option (or, wait for our upcoming review of some SanDisk cards).