- Obtained from: Walmart
- Price paid: $4.49*
- Advertised capacity: 32GB
- Logical capacity: 30,992,760,832 bytes
- Physical capacity: 30,992,760,832 bytes
- Fake/skimpy flash: Skimpy (3.15% skimp)
- Protected area: 83,886,080 bytes (inaccessible)
- Speed class markings: Class 10**, U1, V10, A1
- CID data:
- Manufacturer ID:
0x27*** - OEM ID:
0x5048(ASCII:PH)*** - Product name:
0x5344333247(ASCII:SD32G) - Product revision:
0x60
- Manufacturer ID:
* This card was sold in a 2-pack; the price shown is the price for the 2-pack divided by 2.
** This marking appears on the card, but does not appear on the product package.
*** This manufacturer ID/OEM ID combination is pretty well known to belong to Phison.
| Sample # | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacture Date | Aug 2024 | Aug 2024 | Aug 2024 | Aug 2024 | N/A |
| Serial number | 0xdb2401d5 | 0xdb233f8f | 0xdb45d9cb | 0xdb43fc5b | N/A |
| Sequential read speed (MB/sec) | 87.48 | 87.28 | 84.34 | 84.46 | 85.89 |
| Sequential write speed (MB/sec) | 28.44 | 28.03 | 28.23 | 27.81 | 28.13 |
| Random read speed (IOPS/sec) | 1,120.62 | 1,120.18 | 1,068.51 | 1,107.09 | 1,104.10 |
| Random write speed (IOPS/sec) | 259.26 | 254.93 | 259.83 | 261.19 | 258.80 |
| Read/write cycles to first error | Not yet determined | 832 | Not yet determined | 818 | 825 |
| Read/write cycles to 0.1% failure threshold | Not yet determined | 872 | Not yet determined | 866 | 869 |
| Read/write cycles to complete failure | Not yet determined | 993 | Not yet determined | 1,008 | 1,001 |
| Total days to complete failure | Not yet determined | 25 | Not yet determined | 27 | 26 |
| Card reader used | JJC CR-UTC4AC | JJC CR-UTC4AC | JJC CR-UTC4AC | JJC CR-UTC4AC | N/A |
| Package front |  |  | N/A | ||
| Package back |  | Not available | N/A | ||
| Card front |  |  |  |  | N/A |
| Card back |  |  |  |  | N/A |
Discussion
This was one that I spotted while walking around Walmart one day. On a whim, I decided to pick up a few to test. The most economical way to purchase them was in a 2-pack, so I picked up two 2-packs.
Once I opened the package and saw the back side of the card, it was immediately apparent to me that these cards were sourced from PNY — no one else (that I’ve come across, at least) stamps “Made in Taiwan” the back of their cards. The CID data indicates that the cards were manufactured by Phison — which lines up with the other PNY cards I’ve tested.
Performance is about what I would expect from a private label brand like this — not great, but also not the worst I’ve seen. Sequential read and write speeds were close to average; random read and write speeds were below average.
All four samples are currently undergoing endurance testing:
- Sample #1 has not yet hit the 2,000 read/write cycle mark. It is currently expected to get there sometime in May 2025.
Sample #2’s first error was a series of bit flips, across 8 non-contiguous sectors, during round 833. The number of failed sectors increased quickly over the following rounds, taking less than 1,000 read/write cycles to reach the 50% failure threshold. Here’s the graph of this card’s progression:
- Sample #3 has not yet hit the 2,000 read/write cycle mark. It is currently expected to get there sometime in May 2025.
Sample #4’s first error was a series of bit flips, across 2 adjacent sectors, during round 818. Like sample #2, the number of failed sectors increased quickly over the following rounds — just barely making it past the 1,000 read/write cycle mark before failing. Curiously, however, it did not reach the 50% failure threshold — it experienced a corrupted CSD failure, leading the reader to believe that it was only 250MB in size. This happened after about 36% of the card’s sectors had been flagged as “bad”. However, since it got close, I’ll show the graph of this card’s progression through the endurance test:
This is a curious result for a Phison-produced card — in fact, it’s the worst result of any Phison-produced card I’ve tested so far. The way in which samples #2 and #4 failed is pretty similar to other low-quality flash cards that I’ve tested — and thus far, Phison hasn’t been known for putting out low-quality flash. As of the time of this writing, the average Phison-produced card has survived 5,667 read/write cycles — and so far, two of these cards lasted less than 20% of that. This kinda puts a stain — at least, in my opinion — on Phison as a manufacturer. I guess this means that anyone is capable of putting out low-quality flash.
So let’s review: sequential I/O speeds were only OK, random I/O speeds were poor, and endurance (at least, on two out of the four samples) was pretty poor. On top of that, at $0.145 per gigabyte, it’s only an OK value — it got outperformed in pretty much every area by the Lexar Blue 633x and the Kingston Canvas Select Plus (at least, as far as 32GB cards go). Given all this, I think my verdict is “don’t buy these”.
April 20, 2025 (current number of read/write cycles updates automatically every hour)