Hardware What SD card should i get for my Switch?

[NoNAND]

AliExpress is all fakes, never buy SD cards from China.
Buy locally if you have to.

They don't seem to sell 256gb or higher capacity SD cards here because there's no demand for them
AliExpress is my only choice for now.

I heard there are some good retailers there.
You never know until you try

Btw
With this fake 256gb sd card that I got from somewhere. What should i do with it?

 

[atoxique]

You don't have local computer shops to check for SD cards ? If not I'd recommend at least trying ebay first before aliexpress or any thing like that

 

[NoNAND]

You don't have local computer shops to check for SD cards ? If not I'd recommend at least trying ebay first before aliexpress or any thing like that

Well I did check. They mostly sell 64GB SD cards

 

[cisADMlN]

I purchased this from Amazon and it works great on my Switch Lite with SX OS. 65 USD is a pretty good deal.

Micro Center Premium 512GB microSDXC Card UHS-I Flash Memory Card C10 U3 V30 4K UHD Video A1 Micro SD Card with Adapter (512GB)

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I bought this from amazon for 65 USD and it works great on my switch lite with SX OS

Micro Center Premium 512GB microSDXC Card UHS-I Flash Memory Card C10 U3 V30 4K UHD Video A1 Micro SD Card with Adapter (512GB)

 

[Hayato213]

They don't seem to sell 256gb or higher capacity SD cards here because there's no demand for them
AliExpress is my only choice for now.

I heard there are some good retailers there.
You never know until you try

Btw
With this fake 256gb sd card that I got from somewhere. What should i do with it?

Check your local retailers I guess, I was going to recommend Amazon but Amazon doesn't ship to where you live, what I would recommend is something with an U3 speed, compare to U1 speed, it is like 75MBps to 20MBps data transfer. But always test your card when you get it in the mail with tool such as H2testw if you have windows. Don't waste money on Aliexpress you just going to get a fake one.

 

[NoNAND]

Check your local retailers I guess, I was going to recommend Amazon but Amazon doesn't ship to where you live, what I would recommend is something with an U3 speed, compare to U1 speed, it is like 75MBps to 20MBps data transfer. But always test your card when you get it in the mail with tool such as H2testw if you have windows. Don't waste money on Aliexpress you just going to get a fake one.

But wait
Jdbye said that the Switch doesn't make use of any speed higher then A1 or U1
U3 cards won't have much of a difference right?

 

[Deleted User]

But wait
Jdbye said that the Switch doesn't make use of any speed higher then A1 or U1
U3 cards won't have much of a difference right?

I would say faster cards make everything smoother - Especially in emunand

I would only use Sandisk or Samsung prior to these cards

These have been really good

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FKJ99QP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

Not sure if you can find them in your country

 

[Hayato213]

But wait
Jdbye said that the Switch doesn't make use of any speed higher then A1 or U1
U3 cards won't have much of a difference right?

U3 Has better read and write speed, better time when it come to loading games, cost more money but better performance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchHack...ch_speed_tests_u1_vs_u3_microsd_cards_xci_vs/

 

[lolcatzuru]

I've had some not so good and not so bad experiences with SanDisk Ultra before.
I used to have a 64GB SanDisk ultra A1 V30 sd card
But i somehow lost it and i can't seem to find it anywhere.

Anyways. Should i upgrade to a SanDisk Extreme or better to an Extreme Pro?
Is it worth to spend some more money on it?
What about the Nintendo Switch branded SD cards? Are they any good?

well you tell me, extreme sounds pretty crazy doesnt it?

it is worth spending money on it if you think it is.



The nintendo ones are basically the same as standard sd cards.

 

[NoNAND]

U3 Has better read and write speed, better time when it come to loading games, cost more money but better performance.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SwitchHack...ch_speed_tests_u1_vs_u3_microsd_cards_xci_vs/

Ok I'll go for the U3 ones then.

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well you tell me, extreme sounds pretty crazy doesnt it?

it is worth spending money on it if you think it is.



The nintendo ones are basically the same as standard sd cards.

Do you know, are they U1 or U3. Because they sure look cute. I'd love a Mario Star themed SD card

 

[dsrules]

The Samsung Evo Plus / Select is U3 but I don't think the Switch can take advantage of the increased speed.

although that is the case , U3 might still be a few minutes faster when installing big files

 

[ZachyCatGames]

The Samsung Evo Plus / Select is U3 but I don't think the Switch can take advantage of the increased speed.

It can.
In practice, there are very few things one can do to make it take advantage of the higher write speeds (I can only think of game updates and transferring games between internal storage and the SD).
But they also do have better read/random read speeds than the U1 cards, which can help with loading times a bit.

 

[dangopig]

I always buy Samsung Evo+ or Select and they've never failed me so far. Not a fan of SanDisk.

 

[mesmeriize]

I bought a slightly used PNY 512gb for $60 from craigslist. It's pretty good with high transfer speeds

 

[teamlocust]

512 gb SanDisk and run fake test.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

It can.
In practice, there are very few things one can do to make it take advantage of the higher write speeds (I can only think of game updates and transferring games between internal storage and the SD).
But they also do have better read/random read speeds than the U1 cards, which can help with loading times a bit.

Have you benchmarked it? Because it doesn't matter if the SD card is faster if the Switch's SD reader can't go any faster.
For example my 512GB Samsung Evo Plus advertises 90MB/s write speed but I've never seen games install faster than ~30MB/s. It seems pretty safe to assume that ~30MB/s is the limit for both read and write speeds on the Switch. Which even a U1 card is able to achieve.

 

[D34DL1N3R]

Samsung EVO Select 128GB microSDXC UHS-I U3:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0887GP791/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Samsung EVO Select 256GB microSDXC UHS-I U3:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0887P21Z2/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[ZachyCatGames]

Have you benchmarked it? Because it doesn't matter if the SD card is faster if the Switch's SD reader can't go any faster.
For example my 512GB Samsung Evo Plus advertises 90MB/s write speed but I've never seen games install faster than ~30MB/s. It seems pretty safe to assume that ~30MB/s is the limit for both read and write speeds on the Switch. Which even a U1 card is able to achieve.

Read speeds can be up to ~85mb/s from what I remember, the write speeds are whatever the card can handle.
The advertised write (and sometimes read cough U1 sandisk cough) speeds on most cards are mostly BS, they cannot hold those speeds for long, also if you're doing pirated game installs, you're either installing from the SD card (reducing both read and write speeds) or installing over USB (which is limited to about 30mb/s). Not an accurate/good benchmark.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Read speeds can be up to ~85mb/s from what I remember, the write speeds are whatever the card can handle.
The advertised write (and sometimes read cough U1 sandisk cough) speeds on most cards are mostly BS, they cannot hold those speeds for long, also if you're doing pirated game installs, you're either installing from the SD card (reducing both read and write speeds) or installing over USB (which is limited to about 30mb/s). Not an accurate/good benchmark.

Did not know that about USB. Since it's USB 3 I assumed it would be able to go much faster than that. Software bottleneck, I guess. Even the SanDisk U1 advertises 100MB/s read speed though, the exact same as my Samsung U3, so there's not much difference. The only difference is in write speed (Samsung at 90MB/s, SanDisk at unknown, but I believe I tested an older SanDisk to do 30MB/s write so fast enough not to be bottlenecked by USB installs then)

 

[haxan]

I got this
it was on sale for over half the price and it hasn't failed me yet. All the other options by the other users were also really good, so it all boils down to size and budget. I personally can go for bigger because my uses involve a lot of emulation alongside my installed switch games (the 512 still serves this purpose perfectly but I'm greedy), so see what fits your needs.