- Obtained from: AliExpress
- Price paid: $2.99
- Advertised capacity: 16GB
- Protected area: 0 bytes
- Speed class markings: Class 10, A1
- CID data:
- Manufacturer ID:
0x00 - OEM ID:
0x0000 - Product revision:
0x00
- Manufacturer ID:
| Sample # | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logical capacity | 16,106,127,360 bytes | 16,106,127,360 bytes | 16,106,127,360 bytes | 15,938,355,200 bytes | 15,938,355,200 bytes | 15,938,355,200 bytes | 16,022,241,280 bytes |
| Physical capacity | 8,478,740,480 bytes | 8,438,415,360 bytes | 4,097,835,008 bytes | 15,938,355,200 bytes | 15,938,355,200 bytes | 15,938,355,200 bytes | 11,471,676,074 bytes |
| Fake/skimpy flash | Fake flash | Fake flash | Fake flash | Skimpy (0.39% skimp) | Skimpy (0.39% skimp) | Skimpy (0.39% skimp) | N/A |
| Product name | 0x0000000000 | 0x0000000000 | 0x0000000000 | 0x0050fffffc | 0x0050fffffc | 0x0050fffffc | N/A |
| Manufacture date | Sep 2023 | Sep 2023 | Aug 2023 | Oct 2023 | Oct 2023 | Oct 2023 | N/A |
| Serial number | 0x00023786 | 0x0002377b | 0x000253ee | 0x12800188 | 0x12800188 | 0x12800188 | N/A |
| Sequential read speed (MB/sec) | 21.74 | 21.58 | 21.69 | 20.53 | 9.21 | 20.68 | 19.24 |
| Sequential write speed (MB/sec) | 11.17 | 10.50 | 15.25 | 14.91 | 9.05 | 10.20 | 11.85 |
| Random read speed (IOPS/sec) | 1,098.46 | 1,178.11 | 1,225.08 | 1,408.72 | 1,317.55 | 1,341.44 | 1,261.56 |
| Random write speed (IOPS/sec) | 0.82 | 0.82 | 2.08 | 0.86 | 0.54 | 0.79 | 0.99 |
| Read/write cycles to first error | 18 | 4 | Not yet determined | 11 | 317 | 0 | 70 |
| Read/write cycles to complete failure | 6,805 | 763 | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | 1,212 | 2,923 |
| Total days to complete failure | 145 | 15 | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | 67 | 76 |
| Card reader used | JJS CR-UTC4AC | JJS CR-UTC4AC | JJS CR-UTC4AC | 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
In early 2024, AliExpress started running sales where items — seemingly from a single seller — were priced at either $1.99, $2.99, or $3.99, and you were allowed to purchase any combination of 10 items…I think per day? This one caught my attention for a couple of reasons: first, the bright orange color; and second, the fact that they offered it in a 618GB capacity — it’s rather odd for an SD card manufacturer to be offering a card in a size that isn’t a power of 2. However, given that the prices on all of the sizes were practically identical, the 618GB card is almost certainly fake, and hence I didn’t buy any of them (yet).
This particular brand also has two different card designs: one whose cards had a primarily orange and white design, and one whose cards had a primarily blue and black design. When I ordered these, I must have thought that there was a significant difference between the two — and if memory serves, I thought that one of them had the “Extreme Pro” label on it, and the other one didn’t — but after receiving them and looking at them more closely, I can’t see a difference between them. They both appear to have the “Extreme Pro” label — and thus, I’m going to lump them both under this section.
Plugging them in, however, revealed a few differences:
- The orange/white cards are fake — two of them were 8GB in size, while one was only 4GB in size. The blue/black cards, on the other hand, were genuine (if slightly skimpy).
- The orange/white cards have a different product name than the blue/black cards.
- The orange/white cards have unique serial numbers — whereas the blue/black cards all have the same serial number.
I’m guessing that all of this means that the seller sourced these cards from more than one manufacturer.
I was surprised that the first three samples turned out to be fake — usually smaller capacity cards like this are genuine. But, I suppose there are sellers who will skimp on just about anything to make a buck.
The performance on them so far has been…terrible. All performance metrics were below average, with most measurements being more than one standard deviation below average. In fact, its best single measurement — the random read score on sample #4 — was only enough to put it into the 37th percentile in that category.
This card bears the Class 10 and A1 marks; and while performance on 5 out of the 6 samples was good enough to qualify for the Class 10 mark, it missed the mark on both random read and random write speeds that would be needed for the A1 mark. And while I’ll throw in my standard disclaimer — that perhaps this card would have done better had it been tested under the proper conditions — I highly doubt it, especially with random write speeds as terrible as they were.
On the endurance front, 5 of the 6 samples are still undergoing endurance testing:
- Sample #1 only managed to go for 18 read/write cycles before it experienced its first error. It managed to go for quite some time — with the number of errors continually increasing the entire time — but eventually it got to the point where any attempt to write to it would result in I/O errors. I made several attempts to get it to continue — switching it to different card readers, and even adding code to my program to avoid sectors that have continually exhibiting I/O errors — but eventually I had enough and just declared it “dead”. By the time it reached that point, about 14.66% of its sectors had already been marked “bad” — so it wasn’t that far off (relatively speaking) from hitting the 50% failure threshold on its own. Here’s what this sample’s progression looked like:
- Sample #2 only managed to go for 4 read/write cycles before it encountered its first error. It continued to experience errors every few rounds — affecting about 1,024 sectors at a time — until round 763, when suddenly over half of the sectors started reading back as all
0xff‘s. Here’s what this sample’s progression looked like:
- Sample #3 has survived 6,589 read/write cycles so far and has not yet experienced any errors.
- Sample #4’s first error was a 64-sector wide data verification error during round 12. It has survived 1,700 read/write cycles in total so far.
- Sample #5’s first error was a series of bit flips affecting two sectors during round 318; it has survived 1,405 read/write cycles in total so far.
- Sample #6’s first error was a 10-sector wide bit flip error during round 1. This continued to get progressively worse over subsequent rounds. At some point during round 1,213, it stopped responding to commands altogether. By that point, it had suffered errors over more than 19% of the total sectors on the card. Here’s what this card’s progression looked like:
My overall opinion on these cards? Don’t buy them. They’re garbage. They perform terribly, their capacities are inconsistent, and 4 of the 6 started running into issues before hitting 20 read/write cycles, and the fifth only made it a few hundred read/write cycles before running into issues. Only one of them managed to make it past the 2,000 read/write cycle mark without issues. Don’t waste your money on them.
July 20, 2024 (current number of read/write cycles is updated automatically every hour)