Discussion
This is a card that came up as part of AliExpress’s “Dollar Express” sales. Looking at these cards, I’m not sure how they ended up in the Chinese market — there’s no Mandarin text on the package, and the languages that are on there (plus the presence of an EAN) tells me that these cards were likely intended for retail in Europe. But regardless, they made their way to China — or possibly never left China.
On the outside, this card looks almost identical to its 64GB sibling — the card artwork is the same, and the package is the same — including the seal of authenticity, the regulatory marks, and the PNY contact support contact information. The only difference seems to be capacity. But on closer inspection, the cards were vastly different: the manufacturer IDs, OEM IDs, product names, and product revisions were all different between the two. Whereas the 64GB version uses manufacturer ID 0x27 — which is pretty well known to belong to Phison — this version uses manufacturer ID 0xfe. I don’t know who this manufacturer ID is assigned to, but I’ve only ever seen it with off-brands before now — the Auotkn Extreme 8GB, Bekit, Cloudisk, and Reletech.
All of this points to the conclusion that PNY went with a cheaper manufacturer for the 128GB version — and it shows in the results. This card got sequential write scores that were well above average, but it only goes downhill from there. Two of the three got sequential read scores that were only a little bit above average, but the third got a score that was pretty far below average. Random read and write scores were consistently below average. This is a stark contrast to the 64GB version produced by Phison, where every sample got above average scores in every category.
The card bears the U3, V30, and A1 markings. While it performed well enough to qualify for the U3 and V30 markings, the abysmal random I/O performance put it far short of the level it needed to be at to qualify for the A1 marking. I’ll throw in my standard disclaimer here: my performance testing method do not align with those prescribed by the SD standard — it’s possible that these cards would have done better had they been tested under proper conditions…but somehow, I doubt it.
On the endurance testing front:
- Sample #1’s first error was a single bit flip, in a single sector, during round 758. It has survived 3,844 read/write cycles in total so far.
- Sample #2’s first error was a single bit flip, in a single sector, during round 1,295. It has survived 3,772 read/write cycles in total so far.
- Sample #3’s first error was a single bit flip, in a single sector (noticing a pattern here?), during round 680. It has survived 3,724 read/write cycles in total so far.
Overall? The poor random I/O scores didn’t impress me much. Endurance tests are going well so far, but it’s too early to make a determination on just how reliable they are. I might buy these if price is a concern and these were the absolute cheapest option out there — but as it stands right now, they’re not the cheapest option out there — I picked up the Lenovo thinkplus 128GB for cheaper, and it got better performance scores than this card did.
June 12, 2025 (current number of read/write cycles is updated automatically every hour)