- Obtained from: AliExpress
- Price paid: $9.99
- Advertised capacity: 256GB
- Logical capacity: 250,139,901,952 bytes
- Physical capacity: 250,139,901,952 bytes
- Fake/skimpy flash: Skimpy (2.29% skimp)
- Protected area: 134,217,728 bytes (inaccessible)
- Speed class markings: Class 10, U3, V30, A2
- CID data:
- Manufacturer ID:
0xdf - OEM ID:
0x2306 - Product name:
0x5344323536(ASCII:SD256) - Product revision:
0x20
- Manufacturer ID:
| Sample # | 1 | 2 | 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Serial number | 0x00000208 | 0x0000092a | 0x0000090f | N/A |
| Manufacture date | Jun 2023 | Jun 2023 | Jun 2023 | N/A |
| Sequential read speed (MB/sec) | 89.95 | 90.47 | 88.76 | 89.73 |
| Sequential write speed (MB/sec) | 39.49 | 41.79 | 39.53 | 40.27 |
| Random read speed (IOPS/sec) | 1,611.52 | 1,693.19 | 1,655.01 | 1,653.24 |
| Random write speed (IOPS/sec) | 295.95 | 302.96 | 293.82 | 297.58 |
| Read/write cycles to first error | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined |
| Read/write cycles to total failure | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined |
| Total days to complete failure | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined |
| Card reader used | JJS CR-UTC4AC | JJS CR-UTC4AC | JJS CR-UTC4AC | N/A |
| Package front |  |  |  | N/A |
| Package back |  |  |  | N/A |
| Card front |  |  |  | N/A |
| Card back |  |  |  | N/A |
Discussion
While cruising through deals on AliExpress, I came upon this model. While I was not entirely convinced that it wasn’t fake, it seems like the seller did try a little harder to pass this off as genuine than some of the other options I’ve come across — so I decided to give it a try.
The packaging for this card looks more like what I’d expect from a name-brand card. Branding is present and on-point, color schemes match the brand’s color scheme, the card’s capacity is printed on the packaging, there are disclaimers printed on the package about the definitions of a kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte, and there is contact information printed on the package. While none of these factors individually would be enough to convince me that a product is genuine, the combination of all of them tells me that this product is — dare I say — most likely genuine.
So far, this actually seems to be a decent card — not a great card, but not a terrible card either. I was pleased to see that it was not fake flash, and at $0.04 per gigabyte, it’s starting to rival the price for platter-based drives. (For comparison, a new WD Blue 3.5″ mechanical drive runs between $0.016 and $0.045 per gigabyte, at the time of this writing, depending on which capacity you buy.) Additionally, all performance metrics were within one standard deviation from average — with sequential I/O speeds being above average, and random I/O speeds being below average. Of the speed class markings that it bears, it performed well enough to qualify for all of them except for the A2 marking. I’ll give my standard disclaimer — perhaps it would have done better if it had been tested under proper conditions — but the A2 mark requires a random write performance of 2,000 IOPS per second, and these cards only made it about 15% of the way there. I seriously doubt it would have done significantly better had it been tested with a reader that offered the capabilities needed to test it properly.
All three samples are currently undergoing endurance testing. None have yet made it to the 2,000 read/write cycle mark. Sample #1 is currently expected to reach this point sometime in August 2025, while samples #2 and #3 are expected to reach this point sometime in July 2025.
Side note: samples #1 and #2 did technically experience errors, but I’m almost positive that they were device mangling errors and thus not the card’s fault. Therefore, I’ve decided to discard those errors.
July 5, 2024