First MicroSD card with 2 TByte storage capacity in a first test
The AGI Supreme Pro TF138 is the first MicroSD card to reach the limit of the SDXC standard. New card readers are required for larger cards.
- Lutz Labs
Kioxia and Western Digital have already announced them, but the Taiwanese company AGI was quicker to deliver: the first MicroSD card with an impressive capacity of 2 TByte has arrived at our lab. The card is not yet available in stores, but ours is probably the first one to find its way to Germany. AGI mentions Mindfactory as a retailer, but the card is not even listed there yet.
The TF138 works in any reasonably up-to-date card reader on the PC and in Raspis, smartphones or cameras, even an older system camera from 2016 had no problems with it. It uses the DDR208 mode, which is not standardized by the SD Association and promises a speed of up to 208 MByte/s when reading and writing. However, this only works with the right card reader; in most other models, the card only manages a maximum of 104 MByte/s.
13 hours for a short test
In the test, the TF138 achieved a maximum of 165 MByte/s when reading and 161 MByte/s when writing; the values for accessing random addresses are also in the good range with just under 3000 IOPS when reading and 1360 when writing.
However, the speed drops sharply for longer-lasting tasks: Complete writing using H2testw took almost 13 hours, the write speed dropped to an average of 39 MByte/s – at least H2testw certified the card's full capacity afterwards. The read speed was 125 MByte/s; AGI will therefore have used rather slow QLC flash for the card.
Manufacturer unclear
It is unclear who actually produced the card. AGI is a lesser-known manufacturer of DRAM and SSDs in Germany; according to the information in the internal card registers, the manufacturer is "unlisted", the product name "stora 0.7".
It is to be expected that further MicroSD cards with 2 TByte, which are very similar to the AGI card, will come onto the market in the coming months. A card of the same size from Kioxia is already on its way from Japan to the editorial office - who knows, maybe Kioxia will even manage to supply retailers before AGI.
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