SanDisk MicroSD Express Review: Blazing-Fast Storage for Your Switch 2

If raw throughput is what matters most when choosing a microSD Express card, the officially licensed SanDisk microSD Express for the Nintendo Switch 2 may be the best option. I tested one last week, and in nearly every test I ran, it outperformed IGN's current pick for the best microSD Express card for the Nintendo Switch 2, the Samsung P9 Express.

If you care about raw throughput when choosing a microSD Express card, the SanDisk Officially Licensed microSD Express Card for Nintendo Switch 2 might be the best option. I tested one last week and it beat IGN's current budget best Nintendo Switch 2 microSD card, the Samsung P9 Express, in almost every test I ran on it.

The real question is whether it's even worth paying for. MicroSD Express cards are super fast compared to older microSD cards which are still pretty fast in every handheld game that isn't Switch 2, not even close. The SanDisk card is clearly faster than competing options from PNY and Samsung in many ways, but you won't really notice until you're transferring game files back and forth between it and your Switch 2. Faster is better, but there are other things to consider, including price.

SanDisk offers its card in capacities of 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB. I consider 512GB to be the sweet spot, which gives you a total of three-quarters of a terabyte when you factor in the console's 256GB internal space. But SanDisk cards are better than similar options from PNY or Walmart's Onn brand.

SanDisk MicroSD Express Card – Hands-On Photos

When looking at microSD Express card specs for the Switch 2, you can safely ignore the basic output numbers that most manufacturers like to advertise. In the case of the SanDisk card, it's 880MB/s read and 650MB/s write, which is faster than almost any other card I've tested! (The only one that ranks higher is the PNY, at 890MB/s and 750MB/s, respectively.) But that number refers to the sequential read format, and as my testing showed, it's a poor reflection of actual performance during random reads and writes.

You see, video games are not monolithic files. They are packages that contain countless smaller files, so the process of transferring them starts and stops constantly, slowing down the work considerably. How well the card does there depends on how it handles these seamless transitions.

Grabbing the handle on the Switch 2 microSD Express card means scheduling file transfers between it and my console in docked mode. And at that, the SanDisk card was incredibly capable. For example, when writing Mario Kart World, which is currently a 22GB game, it hit 94MB/s (compared to the 21.9GB I tested earlier for the Samsung P9 Express) to the card. When it came to restoring games to the Switch 2's internal memory, it was actually a bit slower, clocking in at just 91MB/s.

It did the same for every game I tested. It averaged 105MB/s when I transferred Resident Evil 4 to the card, and only 80MB/s on the way back to the console, and I measured 95MB/s to the card and 85MB/s from it when playing Super Smash Bros. back and forth. Donkey Kong Banana was the fastest at 8.9GB. Writing an 8.9GB game to the card took just over a minute and was 122MB/s. (When I sent it to internal storage it averaged 88MB/s.)

Despite reading slower than writing, the SanDisk card still outperforms most other cards I've tested. The Samsung card had a higher 96MB/s when I ported Resident Evil 4 from it to the Switch 2, but was between 1MB/s and 12MB/s slower on other games. The PNY card had about the same read speed, but when it came to write speed, it managed nearly half the writes of the SanDisk option. That can make a difference of a few minutes on larger files—Mario Kart World took over seven minutes to write to the PNY card, compared to only about four minutes with the SanDisk. Basically, if you find yourself switching games on and off, the SanDisk microSD Express card can be a real time saver.

It all evens out where it matters most: the games' actual load times. Measuring these, I found the SanDisk card to be about the same as the PNY and Samsung cards I previously tested. Donkey Kong Bananza took 21 seconds from its selection on the Switch 2 home screen to its title screen, just like those cards. Mario Kart World averaged 19.4 seconds, or a tenth of a second behind PNY Kart, and about two seconds faster than the Samsung P9. However, it got me through The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom almost a full second faster, at 8.5 seconds, than either of these maps.

It's clear that SanDisk's officially licensed Switch 2 card is at least as good as any other high-performance card on the market. You won't be disappointed. It's still slower in most cases than downloading games from the Switch 2's internal storage, but the difference is negligible – most games load just a fraction of a second faster on the Switch 2 itself than microSD Express.

The Nintendo-licensed SanDisk microSD card for Nintendo Switch 2 is available on Amazon in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB options.

Wes is a freelance writer (Freelance Wes, he's called) who has consistently covered tech, gaming, and entertainment since 2020 at Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, Hardcore Gamer, and most recently The Verge. Inside him are two wolves: one who thinks it's okay to start collecting game consoles again, and the other who thinks about it, but stronger.

It might be easier to capture files faster on a Nintendo-licensed SanDisk microSD Express card, but I wouldn't buy it over other options I've looked at in the past. SanDisk wants you to reach deeper into your wallet, shelling out $250 for the 512GB card tested here. This is slightly more than the PNY option, which is priced at $124 as of this writing. Meanwhile, SanDisk's 256GB version is priced at $82, but that's hard to pay when a 512GB Onn card from Walmart is just $3 more. Of course, the price of microSD Express cards goes up and down with the wind—when I finished this review, all three SanDisk cards were selling for $100 less than the dollar amount I wrote above. In such cases, I'd say it's worth considering