

The same logic extends to microSD cards, as you don’t want a card to fail on you, especially one with a short warranty period or none at all. With external storage, whether that be hard drives, flash drives, or SD cards, vigorous testing and warranty considerations are important. As with all tech, you can sometimes save money by going with lesser-known brands, but you sacrifice quality in the process. Brand name mattersĪnother vital consideration when purchasing a microSD card should be the manufacturer. Nintendo recommends cards that are UHS-1-compatible and that have a transfer speed between 60 and 95 MB/sec. The grades range from UHS-1 (10MB/s) to UHS-3, sometimes with a 1, 2, or 3 printed on the front of the card instead of a 10. Since we cannot predict how microSD cards will perform in the Switch - and they may vary game to game - your concern should mainly be the class 10 speed.Īlso, if you find a microSDXC card with a UHS class grade, you’re in the clear. Each microSD card also has a rated speed, which notes the maximum transfer rate, which is usually significantly higher than 10MB/s. Now, just because a card is graded class 10, it doesn’t mean it’s only capable of reading and writing data at 10MB/s. Since the console will read games stored on the card, a class 10 speed card will likely mitigate lag and slowdowns. For the Switch, however, you will want to only buy cards graded with a class 10 speed. A grade of 2 means a baseline speed of 2MB/s, a 4 means 4MB/s, and so on. Speed classes are assigned a grade - 2, 4, 6, or 10 - to note a card’s minimum baseline speed. Speed class Image used with permission by copyright holderīesides storage, another important factor in choosing the right microSD card is speed. Purchasing microSD cards with that much storage will cost you a pretty penny, but the prices will continue to drop as time goes on. For instance, Dragon Quest Heroes 1 and 2will eat up 32GB of memory each, individually, while The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition sits at around 31GB.Ĭurrently, the largest microSDXC cards available at retail are 1TB, but keep in mind the Switch supports up to 2TB microSDXC cards.
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If you expect to download a good portion of AAA games, you may want to consider at least 200GB.

SDHC stands for Secure Digital High Capacity, but these cards top out at 32GB. Wonder is getting a very red Nintendo Switch OLED

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