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Aloysius Low/CNET
TAIPEI — Just a few stands away from SanDisk here at Computex is Microdia, and while it doesn’t quite have the same brand recognition as the memory card giant, this California-based company also makes flash memory and accessories. It would have been easy to ignore, but then I would have missed a microSD card that stuffs 512GB worth of storage space into a piece of plastic smaller than your fingernail.
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You read that right, 512GB — more than twice the size of the 200GB microSD card that SanDisk announced back at Mobile World Congress in March. The extra-capacity SDXC format allows for up to 2TB cards, but 512GB is the largest we’ve yet seen.
Naturally, it won’t be cheap. Microdia says it estimates the Xtra Elite will cost around $1,000 — which converts to around £655 or AU$1,285 — when it goes on sale in July, though that’s not the final retail price. You can buy a 64GB card (one eighth of the size) for around $30, £18 or AU$35.
The Xtra Elite will use version 4.0 of the Secure Digital standard, and feature an Ultra High Speed (UHS) bus with data transfer rates of up to 300MBps. Because it’s using SD 4.0, the card features an additional row of pins below the standard ones.
Microdia expects the card to be mostly used by professional photographers who will appreciate the fast transfer speeds, though if you’ve tons of cash to spend and a hankering for a vast amount of storage you’ll probably want one, too. Because of its diminutive size, you’ll want to be extra careful it doesn’t go missing.
