- Obtained from: AliExpress
- Price paid: $2.99
- Advertised capacity: 32GB
- Logical capacity: 31,266,439,168 bytes
- Physical capacity: 31,266,439,168 bytes
- Fake/skimpy flash: Skimpy (2.29% skimp)
- Protected area: 83,886,080 bytes (inaccessible)
- Speed class markings: Class 10, U3, A1
- CID data:
- Manufacturer ID:
0xfe - OEM ID:
0x3432(ASCII:42) - Product name:
0x5344313647(ASCII:SD16G) - Product revision:
0x20
- Manufacturer ID:
| Sample # | 1 | 2 | 3 | Average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacture date | Jun 2023 | May 2023 | Jun 2023 | N/A |
| Serial number | 0x00001fe3 | 0x000032f1 | 0x00002e91 | N/A |
| Sequential read speed (MB/sec) | 86.22 | 88.32 | 20.82 | 65.12 |
| Sequential write speed (MB/sec) | 19.33 | 16.43 | 12.94 | 16.23 |
| Random read speed (IOPS/sec) | 1,564.81 | 1,441.72 | 1,225.64 | 1,410.72 |
| Random write speed (IOPS/sec) | 289.82 | 272.14 | 260.35 | 274.10 |
| Read/write cycles to first error | 1,522 | Not yet determined | Not yet determined | 1,522 |
| Read/write cycles to complete 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
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 3-10 items…I think per day? This caught my attention, so I looked through and found a few brands of microSD cards that I hadn’t seen before, including this one.
The product packaging was a little unusual, in that it had a mixture of English and French…and an office address in Germany. This leads me to believe that they wanted buyers to think that this was a North American or European brand — but then someone ruined the illusion by slapping a sticker on the back that says “Shenzhen Guanlin International Trade Co.,Ltd”. On the bright side, at least this particular card isn’t fake flash. They do have some bigger sizes, and the prices on those scale up with size, so I’m guessing that those aren’t fake flash either. Who knows, I might have to try those out sometime.
I’ve only tested one sample so far, but performance was just “meh”. Sequential read speeds were a little above average, while sequential write speeds were pretty well below average. Random read and write speeds were just average. While this was good enough to qualify for the Class 10 mark, it fell well short of the 30MB/sec write speeds required for the U3 mark, and well short of the 500 random write operations per second required for the A1 mark. Perhaps this card would have done better had it been tested under proper conditions — but somehow I doubt it.
Endurance tests for all three samples are still ongoing:
- Sample #1’s first error was a four-sector wide address decoding error during round 1,523. It has endured 3,264 read/write cycles in total so far.
- Samples #2 and #3 have not yet hit the 2,000 read/write cycle mark; they are currently expected to reach this point sometime in August 2024.
Side note: Samples #2 and #3 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. I’ve also added code to my program to detect and mitigate these types of errors.
July 5, 2024 (current number of read/write cycles is updated automatically every hour)