The Samsung 64GB EVO microSD Card, like many of the best SD cards, comes in a somewhat unassuming package, and lacks the normal superlatives about extreme/ultra/turbo NOS performance. Somehow though, against all odds, the EVO 64GB manages to outpace most of the competition for a very reasonable price. Should you consider this card for your purposes? Most likely, yes, but let’s take a closer look first.
Design: Fairly standard
The Samsung 64GB EVO microSD Card uses a white and orange color scheme, and comes with a full-sized SD card adapter. On the card itself you’ll find a U3 speed rating, guaranteeing 30 MB/s of sequential write performance. The packaging also claims “Transfer Speed up to 100 MB/s”, which is just vague enough to leave out whether they are describing write or read speeds. How close does Samsung actually get to this figure in our tests? Read below and we will discuss.
Setup Process: No sweat
The Samsung 64GB EVO microSD Card doesn’t require much in the way of setup. Remove the card from the packaging and begin using it. If you’re using a full-sized SD port/device, simply use the included adapter.
Performance: On par with the competition
The Samsung 64GB EVO microSD Card is U3 rated, guaranteeing a minimum sequential write speed of 30 MB/s. This will be suitable for recording 4K video on an overwhelming majority of mirrorless cameras such as the Panasonic Lumix GH5. The EVO will do you one better though—we were able to consistently achieve around 65 MB/s write speed in CrystalDiskMark’s 1 GiB sequential write speed test, across 9 iterations. Blackmagic’s Disk Speed Test yielded nearly identical numbers as well. This is encouraging because consistency is important in video recording scenarios. Read speeds hovered around 88 MB/s in CrystalDiskMark and 92 MB/s in Blackmagic’s tests. These numbers are right in line with all the other UHS-I cards that we’ve tested. Write speeds tend to vary the most significantly between cards, but the spread between the fastest and slowest read speeds is quite thin. Overall these are very encouraging figures. This card is fast enough to confidently handle video recording bitrates up to 400 Mbit (50 MB/s). This makes it more than capable of handling 4K and beyond on most mirrorless cameras. The only time you will need more speed, potentially, is for 8K recording down the line, or for ProRes/RAW recording on cameras like the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K.
Price: Fairly competitive
Samsung EVO vs. Samsung EVO Select
Curiously, the biggest threat to the Samsung EVO is the Samsung EVO Select, a card which performed near identically in our tests, but cost $12 instead of $17. We can’t really see a reason to buy the EVO over the EVO Select given their current prices. If it weren’t for Samsung’s own EVO Select microSD card, we would be recommending the EVO wholeheartedly. The EVO is a fast, consistent, affordable card perfectly capable of 4K and beyond. However, the EVO Select is essentially the same card for even cheaper, so choose that card instead unless pricing circumstances change due to a sales event.
