Micro Center is a chain of retail stores in the US that sells a wide variety of computers, laptops, and related accessories — motherboards, processors, RAM, hard drives, SSDs, keyboards, mice, printers, ink/toner, monitors, networking equipment, and even 3D printers and filament. Basically, if you’re a computer enthusiast, stepping into one of their stores is like being a kid walking into a candy store. Unfortunately, there are no Micro Centers where I live — the closest one is a 3-hour drive away from me.
I purchased this card at the suggestion of Reddit user u/killahKaZx (link). The manufacturer ID and OEM ID would seem to indicate that Silicon Power manufactured these cards. Scores were mixed, but as a whole were slightly above average. Here’s how things shook out:
- Sequential read: Sample #4 got a result that was significantly lower than the other samples, putting at the 31st percentile (as of the time of this writing). The other samples placed between the 64th and 79th percentiles. All measurements were above average, even if only slightly.
- Sequential write: All results were clustered fairly close together, scoring between the 59th and 73rd percentiles. All measurements were above average, even if only slightly.
- Random read: Sample #1 got a result that was significantly lower than the other samples, putting it at just the 12th percentile. Sample #4 also got a result that was a little lower than the rest of the group, putting it at the 48th percentile. The remaining samples all scored between the 59th and 63rd percentiles.
- Random write: Sample #1 got a result that was lower than the other samples, putting it at the 49th percentile. The other samples all scored between the 66th and 69th percentiles.
These cards bear the Class 10, U3, V30, and A1 marks; all samples scored well enough to qualify for the Class 10, U3, and V30 marks; however, random write performance fell short of what would be needed for the A1 mark. However, I’ll throw in my standard disclaimer here: my performance testing methods do not align with those prescribed by the SD specification; it’s possible that these cards would have done better had they been tested under proper conditions.
On the endurance front:
- Sample #1’s first error was a series of bit flip errors, affecting 3,547 sectors, during round 3,806. It kept going for only another 19 read/write cycles before it decided to make itself read-only. (Oddly — on my JJC readers, it showed as a read-only card; on my Realtek reader, it refused to initialize at all.)
- Sample #2’s first error was a series of bit flips, affecting 8 contiguous sectors, during round 3,099. It has survived 3,124 read/write cycles in total so far.
- Sample #3 has survived 2,819 read/write cycles and has not yet experienced any errors.
- Samples #4 and #5 have not yet reached the 2,000 read/write cycle mark. They are expected to get there sometime in July 2025.
June 21, 2025 (total number of read/write cycles updates automatically every hour)