Kodak is a name that has its roots stretching back more than 130 years. Although this is long before the advent of modern digital photography, they did not let it simply pass them by: they invented one of the first megapixel camera sensors, and they also produced the first commercially-available DSLRs, the DCS-100, which was released in 1991. And, while they have largely exited the camera business, their name is still well associated with photography today.
While I don’t associate Kodak with making microSD cards (or flash memory in general), they turned up fairly frequently while browsing through microSD cards on AliExpress. I initially only purchased one — but after making the decision to try to test three of each model, I went back and purchased two more.
On the performance front, this card was kinda disappointing:
- Sequential read: All three scores were slightly above average. Sample #1 did slightly better than the other two, with its score putting it in the 54th percentile (as of the time of this writing). The other two scores came in at the 37th and 38th percentiles.
- Sequential write: All scores were pretty well below average. All three were pretty close to each other, coming in between the 16th and 21st percentiles.
- Random read: All three scores were slightly below average. Sample #3 did slightly worse than the other two, scoring in the 38th percentile; the other two scored in the 45th and 49th percentiles.
- Random write: All scores were pretty well below average. All three were pretty close to each other, coming in between the 20th and 23rd percentiles.
These cards bear the Class 10, U3, V30, and A1 marks; performance was good enough to qualify for the Class 10 mark, but was not good enough to qualify for any of the other marks. However, I’ll throw in my standard disclaimer: my performance testing methods do not align with those prescribed by the SD standard; it’s possible that they would have done better had they been tested under proper conditions.
Curiously, the 32GB and 64GB versions appear to have been made by different manufacturers, as indicated by the data in their respective CID registers. The 64GB version did markedly better on write performance — although, interestingly, markedly worse on read performance. Both versions are similar in their packaging — although the 64GB version came with a microSD-to-SD adapter, whereas the 32GB version did not — and both bear the information of Dexxon Groupe, indicating (to me, at least) that they were likely sold by Dexxon under license from Kodak. Indeed, their website indicates that they sell storage and IT products for a number of various well-known brands, Kodak included. It appears that Dexxon simply chose different manufacturers for the two versions of this card. It’s unclear exactly what the reason for this is.
On the endurance testing front:
Sample #1’s first error was a 6-sector wide data verification error during round 3,7551. It survived about another 6,300 read/write cycles; during round 10,318, it stopped responding to commands, having made it just shy of the 50% failure threshold. Here’s the graph of this card’s progression:
- Sample #2 has survived 6,778 read/write cycles so far and has not yet experienced any errors.
- Sample #3 has survived 6,777 read/write cycles so far and has not yet experienced any errors.
Overall? I’m not terribly impressed with these cards — at least, in terms of performance. And despite the fact that they’ve been going through endurance testing for more than a year, it’s still too early to make any judgment calls about their durability — thanks to their slow sequential write speeds, that part is going to take a while longer to narrow down. But I think it’s safe to say that there are other options out there that performed better.
1I had previously reported that sample #1’s first error was during round 3,531. However, this failed to take into account an extra 224 read/write cycles that happened before I had implemented save states in my program. This brings the actual number up to 3,755.
June 16, 2025 (current number of read/write cycles is updated automatically every hour)