Samsung is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of memory chips, so it’s no surprise that the company has a big role in the microSD card world. But at retail in the U.S., Samsung’s elegant little orange cards have generally been eclipsed by Kingston and SanDisk products. Samsung’s 64GB EVO UHS-I microSD card ($64.99) is attractive, but it won’t change the basic equation. While it costs a bit less than higher-speed cards, you can see the difference in performance in both mobile devices and PCs. While I wouldn’t throw one out if I found it in my device, I prefer SanDisk’s Mobile Extreme lineup.

Samsung has several cards called EVO. This EVO UHS-I card I tested is the company’s fastest. It’s a speed class 10 card, with transfer speeds that Samsung claims are up to 48MBps. It’s orange and white like a Creamsicle, and comes with a full-sized SD adapter for cameras and PCs.

To test microSD cards, we ran the A1 SD Card benchmark on a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 ($307.96 at Amazon)(Opens in a new window)  smartphone, copied files to and from a MacBook Pro using the built-in SD card reader, and ran the CrystalDiskMark benchmark on a Cyberpower PC with the cards plugged into a USB 3.0 reader.

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4.5

Outstanding

SanDisk Extreme 64GB MicroSD Card

 

 

 

Read Our SanDisk Extreme 64GB MicroSD Card Review

3.5

Good

SanDisk Extreme Plus UHS-I 64GB Memory Card

 

 

 

Read Our SanDisk Extreme Plus UHS-I 64GB Memory Card Review

4.0

Excellent

SanDisk Extreme PRO SDHC/SDXC UHS-I 64GB Memory Card

$59.99

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at Amazon

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Read Our SanDisk Extreme PRO SDHC/SDXC UHS-I 64GB Memory Card Review

As you can see, Samsung’s EVO card fell well behind the competing SanDisk and Kingston cards on speeds, especially when plugged into our PC. It didn’t do as well in the Galaxy Note 3, either, when writing very large files. It’s a good card—if you previously used inexpensive Class 4 cards, for instance, this will feel like The Flash—but it isn’t quite state of the art.

Memory card list prices are meaningless; shopping online for the EVO card, you’re likely to see it in the $35-40 range as opposed to the $50-55 range for faster cards from SanDisk and Kingston. 

That said, you have to make a judgement call as to where on the price-versus-performance scale you want to land. Here at PCMag.com, we tend to go for “maximum performance, but at good value,” so we’ll kick it up a notch higher to the SanDisk Mobile Extreme and enjoy that card’s higher write speeds for recording and copying large files.