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Review on πŸ“± Patriot 256GB A1 / V30 Micro SD Card: Ideal for Android Phones & Tablets, 4K Video Recording by Eric Weber

Revainrating 4 out of 5

66 MB/s write average, good price

(see edit at the end) Original: 05/08/2019 I usually use Samsung cards. They're usually the fastest, most reliable, but not always the cheapest. After realizing I needed a second 256GB card, having just bought it for $45, I found that the price went up to $50 within 48 hours. Call me stubborn and cheap, but I was looking for a better deal. It cost about $35 and was advertised with the same or similar specs as the Evo Select cards with a price difference of $10-$15 (less). Unfortunately, many reviews say that outages or crashes are common, so I never felt the urge to buy it due to the idea of data loss. However, I'm using this on a tablet, not my phone, and the data will be swappable, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was using an Anker USB 3.0 adapter to USB 3.0 port on an Asus Maximus ROG VIII (iirc) mobo with Win10 Pro transferring from the internal mechanical archive drive. Not the fastest drive, but a way to easily reach top speeds in the 100MB/s range. I tested it with 195GB of data to verify the authenticity of the capacity and the average (stable) write speed. Capicity is genuine, the data is not corrupted. Write speeds averaged 66 MB/s, falling to 54 MB/s and back again (lots of dips and spikes, not stable at 66 MB/s most of the time) peaking at 102 MB/s for a few seconds at the beginning of the record . Transmission. Considering I'm getting 60-76MB/s with Evo Select cards, I'd say my tests pass with flying colors. I didn't have the patience to test the read speed or use the benchmark. The information reported by Windows is sufficient for my purposes as I do not verify this professionally. I'm just a consumer looking for reliability at an affordable price and tend to share my insights with others so they can make an informed decision. Now we wait. Some reviews indicate rejection in the 30-78 day range, well beyond the return period. I don't know what Patriot Warranty Service is and I hope I don't have to find out. If the thing still works after two months, I'll report back with a 5th star. I hope I don't get back with an error message. If you're going to pop this into a tablet to watch movies or whatever, go for it. If you want to use it on your phone, where data reliability is important (photos of kids and family are important to me), read the user reviews here, read some professional reviews and make an informed choice before you buy.Edit : 05/29/2019 I have a 256GB Samsung Evo card and a 256GB Patriot card side by side in Windows (10) and my capacity is listed as 232GB vs 238GB on Samsung, both have exFAT. Where are the other 6 gigs? I'm not even going to talk about those card/drive manufacturers who claim that "formatting" is the reason you get 232GB of usable space instead of the advertised 256GB (again, where's the other 24GB?!) . I don't give a star for that, the card actually works just as well as my Evo card. Just follow the explained options.

Pros
  • Micro SD cards
Cons
  • Can't remember but something was