This enthusiast has been torturing 351 microSD cards for years, and some brands are winning

An enthusiast has been rigorously testing 351 microSD cards for several years, revealing notable differences in endurance among various brands and card types. The project, initiated by tech enthusiast Matt Cole in 2023, has yielded intriguing insights into the longevity and reliability of these storage devices.

Cole's endurance test, featured on Reddit's r/DataHoarder, involved subjecting a total of 351 cards from 52 brands to repeated write, verify, and erase cycles. Of these cards, 107 are still operational, while 67 are awaiting a spare card reader as part of Cole's setup. This setup is specifically designed to push the cards to their limits, enduring the most stressful conditions.

The project does not mirror typical usage patterns for microSD cards in devices like smartphones, cameras, or handheld gaming consoles. Instead, it focuses on sustained stress, aiming to compare endurance under such rigorous conditions rather than predicting the normal lifespan of these cards.

The cards were categorized into consumer, high-endurance, and industrial types. Consumer cards, which are standard retail models, had an average lifespan of approximately 10,000 program/verify/erase cycles. On the other hand, high-endurance cards, designed for devices with frequent data writing, and industrial cards, built for heavier use, exhibited distinct characteristics.

Among the consumer brands, PNY, Kingston, Delkin Devices, Lexar, and Samsung emerged as the top performers. Notably, Amazon Basics cards have yet to fail in the test, having survived 788 days, completing 16,600 cycles, and writing a combined 4.2 petabytes of data. However, they were excluded from the primary rankings due to potential changes in NAND flash or other components that could alter the test's applicability if Amazon modifies the cards without changing the product name.

Conversely, several established brands showed weaker results. ADATA, Gigastone, Micro Center, Silicon Power, and SanDisk were among the less reliable brands in their respective categories. Cole did not include no-name brands in this comparison due to the higher likelihood of inconsistent results with generic cards.

Cole's project utilized a variety of mini PCs and older gaming laptops, including a Beelink Mini-S, five TRIGKEY Green G4 mini PCs, a TRIGKEY K-N100, an AOOSTAR mini PC, an MSI GE62VR-7RF Apache Pro, a Lenovo IdeaPad Y850, and an Asus ROG Strix Hero II GL504GM. Each of these systems was equipped with microSD card readers to run the endurance tests.

Cole purchases the cards himself, unless they are donated, and maintains the systems and readers used for the tests. The project's longevity could be impacted by higher memory card prices, making it more costly to continue testing a large number of cards.