Samsung has been one of the biggest competitors to SanDisk’s flash media throne, and as their competition heats up, Samsung’s drives are a very costly alternative for your Android devices or your Steam Deck if you don’t want to pony up the premium cost for the faster speed SanDisk drives. Today we’re taking a look at the Samsung Evo Select chip at its highest capacity – 512GB:
EVO Select Micro SD Memory Card
Manufacturer: Samsung
Capacity: 64, 128, 256, 512 GB (reviewed)
Price: $84.99 USD
Flash memory chips have often come under heavy scrutiny in the past few years because they are so easily knocked off by random competitors on Amazon and eBay. Without any information, you could easily purchase a fake memory card and not possibly find out that it’s bogus until you’re out of your return window.
Because of this, I’ve pretty much only ever stuck to SanDisk’s Extreme or Extreme Pro line due to the fact that SanDisk chips are manufactured by Western Digital so I feel that they’re coming from someone who’s got a lot of experience in the field and their technology is superior to their competition. Buying directly from reputable manufacturers such as Samsung, SanDisk, and Lexar seems to be the only way to avoid this situation and make sure you get what you pay for and avoid getting ripped off. Reddit’s photography section still seems to support this thought as well.
If you’re familiar with our tech section here, you know I’ve reviewed a few Samsung SSDs for the PS5 so when I ordered my Raspberry Pi 4 and it shipped with a Samsung EVO Plus chip, I was shocked to find out that Samsung actually made SD cards. It makes sense, given that Samsung makes cellular phones which obviously have onboard flash memory and hard drives, but when planning for our Steam Deck coverage, I reached out to our friends at Samsung and they sent over this EVO Select Micro SD card for us to check out.
Throwing the chip into the Steam Deck was incredibly easy and quick to set up. You simply pop the chip in the slot, it’ll prompt you to format it for use, and then you can easily select the memory card to install things to it. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. In fact, the Samsung EVO Select felt like it was running things faster than the stock 512GB drive that came with my Steam Deck straight from Valve. It’s not nearly as fast as the Sabrent Rocket 4 2230 that’s in there now, but I still use the EVO Select regularly as a backup and it does a tremendous job while also being rock solid, reliable, and quick.
If you can’t find an EVO Select card, don’t worry – the normal Samsung EVO cards are exactly the same, the EVO Select seems to be retailer exclusive to Amazon with no other real differences that I could find. If you need a memory card that you can run the store and grab it, consider Samsung’s Micro SD cards as they’re slightly cheaper than SanDisk’s and equally as reliable.
Samsung EVO Select Micro SD cards are currently available on sale over at Amazon for an MSRP of between $10 for the 64GB version and up to $45 USD for the 512GB version. This Samsung EVO Select Micro SD card was reviewed using a review unit provided by Samsung. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.
