Nintendo Switch memory card in 2023: The best microSD cards for your console
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While I love my Nintendo Switch and my Nintendo Switch OLED, I don’t love that the base system only has 32GB of onboard storage and the latter is barely any better at 64GB. You quickly run out of space and don’t have room for additional downloads, screenshots, or game data, especially if you decide to go digital with all of your games. Convenience comes with a storage limit, but fortunately, you can easily add more storage via a microSD card.
Game on with the best microSD cards for Nintendo Switch
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SAMSUNG 256GB EVO Plus
Best overall
Samsung’s offering gives you a great mix of performance and capacity. This is the best card to get if you know you’ll be downloading most of your Switch games from the Nintendo eShop. It will not only hold a bunch of games but will load them faster than most other cards!
SanDisk 128GB microSD Card for Nintendo Switch
Best value
This card not only gives you a decent amount of space but also allows you to show off your preferences for Nintendo’s most popular franchise. It features Mario red coloring, is officially licensed by Nintendo, and even features the iconic mushroom. In addition to that, it’s plenty fast with speeds of up to 100MB/s. There’s also a Zelda-themed 64GB card and a Mario star-themed 256GB card at various prices.
Samsung EVO Plus 512GB microSDXC
Best large storage
Samsung makes some of the most reliable microSD cards and this one is perfect for anyone who intends to download a lot of Nintendo Switch games. Use it to hold your save data, images, and software while working efficiently at both reading and writing data.
SanDisk 400GB Ultra microSDXC
Best for moderate usage
This high-quality microSD is perfect for those who primarily download digital games. It has a huge storage capacity, so you’ll be able to store game data for several titles. It features a fast read rate and performs beautifully to give you a smooth gaming experience, especially on the Nintendo Switch OLED.
SanDisk 128GB Extreme microSDXC
Best mid-range
The SanDisk Extreme has blazing-fast read speeds of up to 160MB/s (in certain scenarios) and write speeds of up to 90MB/s. It’s also capable of handling 4K video, high-res photos, and large files without issue. If you go this route, you likely won’t run out of space for a long time.
Samsung 32GB 80MB/s EVO
Best minimal storage
The Samsung microSDHC EVO Select boasts read speeds of up to 95MB/sec.
The best microSD cards for a trip down memory lane
A reliable microSD is an essential Nintendo Switch accessory. Not everyone’s storage needs are the same, but speed, reliability, and performance are things that matter for every Nintendo Switch. Screenshots, gameplay videos, and game data get stored on these drives once you’ve exceeded the internal storage on the console. A functioning SD card is necessary if you want an all-digital library as well.
Make sure you’ve got the best Nintendo Switch microSD cards for your needs and you’ll be happy with the way your Switch performs for quite a while. Remember that there are several different size options, so take a moment to decide which storage card size to get for your Nintendo Switch.
If you’re going to buy a ton of games digitally, that probably means you’re going to want to go all out and pick up the Samsung EVO+ 256GB. It gives you plenty of space to download multiple games from the eShop. If you want something a little less expensive, the Samsung microSDHC EVO Select is a great option. It’s inexpensive and gives you just enough storage to add a few extra games. Just make sure the one you purchase has enough storage space to suit your gaming needs.
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Gaming aficionado Rebecca Spear is iMore’s dedicated gaming editor with a focus on Nintendo Switch and iOS gaming. You’ll never catch her without her Switch or her iPad Air handy. If you’ve got a question about Pokémon, The Legend of Zelda, or just about any other Nintendo series check out her guides to help you out. Rebecca has written thousands of articles in the last six years including hundreds of extensive gaming guides, previews, and reviews for both Switch and Apple Arcade. She also loves checking out new gaming accessories like iPhone controllers and has her ear to the ground when it comes to covering the next big trend.
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Best Memory Cards for Nintendo Switch 2019
Looking for the best memory cards for the Nintendo Switch? We have put together a short guide to help you get the most out of your gaming console.
The Nintendo Switch comes with 32GB of onboard storage, but this limited storage space can quickly fill up with games. Fortunately, the Switch allows you to expand the storage capacity of your device via a microSD card slot. So you can add extra space with a microSD card to expand your library of games far beyond the provided 32GB of internal storage.
Do I need a microSD card for Nintendo Switch?
The Nintendo Switch comes with 32GB of internal storage built-in, so if you are planning on playing only a handful of games, then you might not necessarily need a microSD card. However, if you are planning to download more games and save further data, then yes, you will need to add a microSD card to increase the storage capacity on your device.
For your benefit, it may be worth investing in a microSD card to be confident that you have enough space to fulfil your gaming needs.
Can I use an SD card on Nintendo Switch?
To put it simply, no. Only microSD cards can be used with the Nintendo Switch. The size of the card slot is only compatible with the size of a microSD card, meaning that miniSD cards and SD cards are not compatible with the Switch.
Choosing the right memory card:
To achieve the best results when using your Nintendo Switch, it’s important to choose the correct microSD cards that will work well with your gaming console. However, it’s important to note that not every microSD card on the market will work well with the Switch. For example, if your card is too slow, it may result in errors within your gameplay experience.
With so many memory cards on the market, it can be difficult choosing which one is right for your console. From a range of sizes to different transfer speeds, our guide is in place to help you pick the best card for your Nintendo Switch.
Which microSD cards does the Nintendo Switch support?
The Nintendo Switch supports the following types of microSD cards:
- microSD (up to 2GB)
- microSDHC (4GB – 32GB)
- microSDXC (64GB and above)
Nintendo has stated that if you are using a microSDXC card on the Switch console, you must perform a system update before downloading games onto the card.
With regard to improving your overall gameplay experience, a higher transfer speed of a memory card is very important. If you are thinking about adding a card to your Switch, keep in mind that it needs to be UHS-I compatible and have a transfer speed of 60-95MB/s. It’s important to note that the higher the transfer speed, the better the gameplay experience you will have on your Nintendo Switch.
There is always a risk that if your microSD card isn’t up to requirements, that you could encounter error messages or loss of data.
What does SDHC, SDXC, and UHS-I mean?
Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) microSD cards usually have a capacity range of 4GB to 32GB, whereas Secure Digital Extended Capacity (SDXC) microSD cards range from 64GB and above.
Ultra-High Speed-1, also known as UHS-I, is a speed class for SDHC and SXDC memory cards. UHS-I is able to transfer content at a minimum rate of 10MB/s. An SDHC and SDXC UHS-I card will work in any compatible device at lower speeds, but to take advantage of this speed class, a UHS-I compatible device is essential.
It’s important to remember that Nintendo recommends cards which support UHS-I and have a transfer speed between 60 to 95MB/s to achieve the best results.
To ensure your console reaches its full potential, we want to make sure you’re kitted out with the best memory cards. There are several cards that work well, so to help you out, we have rounded up the best memory cards for the Nintendo Switch. Check them out below!
Best microSD cards for Nintendo Switch:
Best Overall
SanDisk 128GB Nintendo Switch Micro SD – 100MB/s
Nintendo-branded memory cards for the Nintendo Switch allows you to store digital games and additional content in one place to play anywhere, with peace of mind that they have had the thumbs up from Nintendo. The SanDisk microSD card for the Switch is designed to provide dependable storage as you conquer new levels. With transfer rates up to 100MB/s, this card delivers consistent high performance so you can load games fast. Available here.
Runner Up
Samsung 128GB Evo Plus Micro SD – 100MB/s
The Samsung Evo Plus microSD card is the perfect partner for your Nintendo Switch gaming console. Boasting transfer speeds of up to 100MB/s read and 90MB/s write, the Samsung Evo Plus will load games faster than most other cards. Plus, combined with a storage capacity of up to 128GB, this card will give you plenty of room to store games, especially if you are planning on downloading them from the Nintendo eShop. Available here.
Best High Capacity
Samsung 512GB Evo Plus Micro SD – 100MB/s
If you are needing a massive storage boost for your Switch, a 512GB Evo Plus microSD card from Samsung will do just the trick. This high-quality microSD card will allow you to store tonnes of new games. Backed by 4-proof protection, the Evo Plus can withstand up to 72 hours in seawater, extreme temperatures, airport X-ray machines and magnetic fields, so you can be confident that your games will be safe. Available here.
Best Budget
MyMemory 128GB V30 PRO Micro SD – 100MB/s
Looking for a high-quality card that won’t break the bank? Introducing the MyMemory V30 PRO microSD. This card offers a great balance of speed and capacity, at just a fraction of the price of other cards. Offering up to 128GB in capacity and ultra-fast read speeds of up to 100MB/s, the V30 PRO will hold a large number of games with ease. It also comes with a lifetime warranty so you can feel confident about your purchase. Available here.
Mid-Range Storage
SanDisk 64GB Nintendo Switch Micro SD – 100MB/s
The SanDisk 64GB microSD card for the Nintendo Switch is a great mid-range storage option, with transfer rates up to 100MB/s. Up to 64GB in capacity will provide a great amount of storage to ensure you have lots of space and can rest easy knowing you have room for all your favourite games on your Switch. Plus, having the seal of approval from Nintendo will help you to feel safer about your purchase. Available here.
Ultimate Performance
SanDisk 128GB Extreme Pro V30 Micro SD Card – 170MB/s
The SanDisk Extreme Pro line of memory cards offer super-fast speeds for ultimate performance. If you are looking for a top of the line card for your gaming console, then this is it. These cards are durability tested to protect your data from life’s mishaps. Plus, transfer speeds of up to 170MB/s mean this card will loads games faster than most. Combined with 128GB of storage, it is a great choice for those who download loads of games. Available here.
| Name | Read Speed MB/s | Write Speed MB/s | Class | Bus Interface |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SanDisk 128GB Nintendo Switch Micro SD Card (SDXC) | 90MB/s | 100MB/s | Class 10 | UHS-I |
| Samsung 128GB Evo Plus Micro SD Card (SDXC) | 100MB/s | 90MB/s | Class 10 | UHS-I |
| Samsung 512GB Evo Plus Micro SD Card (SDXC) | 100MB/s | 90MB/s | Class 10 | UHS-I |
| MyMemory 128GB V30 PRO Micro SD (SDXC) | 100MB/s | 70MB/s | Class 10 | UHS-I |
| SanDisk 64GB Nintendo Switch Micro SD Card (SDXC) | 100MB/s | 60MB/s | Class 10 | UHS-I |
| SanDisk 128GB Extreme Pro V30 Micro SD Card (SDXC) | 170MB/s | 90MB/s | Class 10 | UHS-I |
Our top recommendations:
All of MyMemory’s top recommendations will give you the speed and space you need to have the ultimate gaming experience. It is very important to choose a reasonably fast microSD card in order for your Nintendo Switch to be able to cope with the data that needs to be written to the card.
Still looking for another card? Be sure to head to our website now to view our full range of memory cards for Nintendo Switch.
Samsung Evo Plus, SanDisk Ultra and Kingston Canvas Select Plus / HDD, SSD, flash drives, other media / iXBT Live
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Samsung, SanDisk, and Kingston are three of the most well-known memory card brands. This article will be a comparative test of three memory cards from the above manufacturers. The memory cards participating in the test have different capacities: from 128 GB to 512 GB. Therefore, the comparison may not be entirely correct. But usually the speed of memory cards of the same model (which capacity is from 128 GB to 512 GB) does not differ much.
Bought these drives at different times for use in the player. I bought a Samsung first. Then I had a player with support for two memory cards. Therefore, 128 GB of Samsung (+ one more card in the second slot) was enough. After changing the player, I had to order a memory card that would replace two cards in the previous player. As a result, SanDisk was bought for 256 GB. But over time, these 256 GB were no longer enough. I had to buy another 512 GB. For various reasons (mostly because of the low price), the choice fell on Kingston.
Parameters
Samsung Evo Plus
- Manufacturer: Samsung
- Model: Evo Ultra
- Grade: U3 V30
- Speed: Reading 100 MB/S, Record 90 MB/S 900 MB/S 900 MB/S 900 MB/s. GB
- Features: Adapter included, 10 year warranty
SanDisk Ultra
- Manufacturer: SanDisk
- Model: Ultra
- Class: U1 V10
- Manufacturer Specified Speed: Read 10
- Capacity: 256 GB
- Features: Adapter in the kit, Warranty 10 years
Kingston Canvas Select Plus
- Manufacturer: KingSton
- Model: Canvas Select Plus
- Class
- : U3 V300
- 100 MB/s
- Capacity: 512 GB
- Features: Adapter included, lifetime warranty.
Packaging
All memory cards inspected are supplied in simple blister packs with a transparent window — behind which the adapter and memory card are hidden. On the front side of the packages are indicated: manufacturer, model, class, capacity, as well as read speed (and Samsung also has write speed). On the back of the packages you can find various additional information, manufacturer contacts, barcodes, a hidden authentication code (SanDisk only) and warranty information. All tested memory cards have a ten-year warranty. Kingston has a «lifetime warranty», but in fact it’s the same ten years.
Appearance
All memory cards come with an SD adapter. The Samsung plastic of the adapter feels the strongest, while the Kingston feels the least. The lock switch is the tightest on the Samsung and the softest on the SanDisk.
The Samsung memory card is red and white, the SanDisk is red and gray, and the Kingston is black with a stripe that changes color depending on the viewing angle. All important information is printed on the front side of the memory cards: manufacturer, model, capacity and recording class.
Testing
Tested with the following devices.
- Lenovo Legion 7 laptop
- Ugreen card reader with Tronsmart adapter
- Motorola Moto G100 phone
Testing was performed using the following software.
- CrystalDiskMark v8.0 (Windows 10)
- ATTO Disk Benchmark v4.01 (Windows 10)
- Flash Memory Toolkit v2.01 (Windows 10)
- SD Card Test v1.9 (Android 12)
All settings were set to default. exFAT file system (in SD Card Test Samsung was tested with FAT32 and exFAT file systems).
Windows showed this amount of monitored memory cards.
- Samsung: 128 GB (119 GB)
- SanDisk: 255 GB (238 GB)
- Kingston: 495 GB (461 GB)
Kingston’s capacity is confusing. There should be 512 GB (476 GB) there. Due to the peculiarities of the calculation, the actual capacity of the drives is approximately 7% lower than the declared one, while for Kingston it is 10% lower.
In CrystalDiskMark, Samsung and Kingston perform equally well, but SanDisk is inferior to both of them in writing speed. This is to be expected given that SanDisk has a V10 record class, while Kingston and Samsung have a V30 record class. In ATTO Disk Benchmark, Kingston has the best speed, SanDisk has the worst. Flash Memory Toolkit repeats the result of the previous test, only the sandisk is inferior here even more.
Then I copied the same 10 GB file to all memory cards. Kingston shows an ideal graph — the speed is stable at 82 MB / s. Samsung has the same speed, but from time to time there are drawdowns of up to 50%. SanDisk significantly lost to competitors — the speed almost immediately dropped to 49MB / s and kept at this level until the end of the test.
A slightly more difficult test. I copied a data package consisting of 20800 files with a total volume of 180 GB onto Kingston and SanDisk memory cards. Since Samsung has a lower capacity, I copied a data packet of 13,000 files to this card with a total volume of just over 100 GB.
On the phone, the speed of memory cards was measured using the SD Card Test application. After I tested the memory cards and took screenshots, I found that the Samsung card was with the FAT32 file system. Formatted it in exFAT and repeated the test. The read speed remained the same, but the write speed dropped by half.
Learn the current price of Samsung Evo PLUS memory cards of various capacities
Learn the current price of Sandisk Ultra Memory
Learn the current price of Kingston Canvas Select Plus memory 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000 9000
SanDisk ordered in China almost three years ago. Samsung and Kingston bought in local stores: Samsung more than four years ago, and Kindston this year. All these memory cards work flawlessly. Kingston’s capacity turned out to be lower than expected, but the speed is the highest there.
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The flash drive writes the disk is write-protected
I apologize for the title, but this is how the question is asked when, when operating with a USB flash drive or SD memory card, Windows reports the error “The disk is write-protected. Remove protection or use another disk «(The disk is write-protected). In this instruction I will show several ways to remove protection from a flash drive or memory card and tell you where it comes from.
I note that in different cases, the message that the disk is write-protected may appear for various reasons — often due to Windows settings, but sometimes — due to a damaged flash drive. I will touch on all the options and their corresponding methods for removing protection in Windows 10, 8. 1 or Windows 7. If something turned out to be not entirely clear, then at the bottom of the article there is a video that demonstrates almost all the ways to fix the error.
Notes: There are some USB flash drives that have a physical write protect switch, usually labeled Lock or with a picture of a lock (check and move it, it sometimes breaks and won’t switch back).
If a write-protected flash drive means an SD memory card or a MicroSD card connected via an adapter to the SD format, pay attention to two nuances:
- SD memory cards and adapters from MicroSD to SD have a small switch on the side: one of its positions — write protection, the second — write is allowed.
- Quite often this switch breaks, as a result we can get permanent write protection, regardless of the position of the “lever”. This is easily solved by replacing the adapter, if it is the case, and more difficult in the case of a full-size SD memory card.
Removing write protection from USB in the Windows Registry Editor
The first way to fix the error will require a registry editor:
- To run it, you can press the Windows + R keys on your keyboard and type regedit and then press Enter.
- On the left side of the registry editor you will see the section structure of the registry editor, find the section
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\StorageDevicePolicies
Please note that this item may not be, then read on
- If this section is present, then select it and look on the right side of the registry editor if there is a parameter with the name WriteProtect and a value of 1 (it is this value that can cause the error The disk is write-protected). If it is, then double-click on it and enter 0 (zero) in the «Value» field. Then save the changes, close the registry editor, remove the flash drive and restart the computer. Check if the bug has been fixed.
- If there is no such partition, then right-click on the partition located one level higher (Control) and select «Create partition». Name it StorageDevicePolicies and select it.
- Then right-click in the empty area on the right and select «DWORD32 Value» (even for x64 Windows).
Name it WriteProtect and leave the value at 0. Just like in the previous case, close the registry editor, remove the USB drive and restart your computer. Then you can check if the error persists.
Additionally, check 2 registry keys
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\RemovableStorageDevices\ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\RemovableStorageDevices\
By default, such a key is not in the registry (and if you do not have it, then it is not the case). If there is a RemovableStorageDevices section, pay attention to the nested subsection and the Deny_Write, Deny_Read, Denya_Execute contained in it, if these parameters are set to 1, they prohibit writing, reading and executing from removable drives.
Remove such parameters — this should remove the write protection. Restart your computer (disconnecting and reconnecting the flash drive may be enough): the problem with the write protection of the flash drive should be resolved.
How to remove write protection on the command line
Another way that can help remove the USB disk error that suddenly shows an error while writing is to remove protection on the command line.
To do this, do the following:
- Run a command prompt as administrator (In Windows 10, this is easiest done through the search in the taskbar, in Windows 8.1 — using the right-click menu on the Start button, in Windows 7 — through the right-click command line in the start menu).
- At the command prompt, type diskpart and press Enter. Then enter the command list disk and find your flash drive in the list of disks, you will need its number. Type the following commands in order, pressing Enter after each.
- select disk N (where N is the flash drive number from the previous step)
- attributes disk clear readonly
- exit
Close the command prompt, disconnect and reconnect the flash drive, then try to do something with the flash drive, such as formatting it or writing down some information to check if the error has disappeared.
